Girlhood Chores of Yore
There were a lot of fun times as I was growing up,
but life was not all fun and games. I enjoyed evenings.
Daddy would turn the radio on to Amos and Andy and
Fibber McGee and Molly and similar programs and
Mama and I would embroider or play table games to-
gether. Mama always did things with me in the eve-
nings while Daddy read the newspaper.
When I was very young my mother started to
teach me how to do things around the house. She was
a nurse and was away from home working much of
the time. My siblings were grown and each had a
job. Sometime in the mid 1920s Mother
taught me to do the ironing. She
taught me to be particular in
everything I did.
Ironing in those days was
much different from today. We
didn’t have a real ironing board,
though some people did. Our
task was done on a wide, pad-
ded board placed from the
kitchen table across to the back of
a straight-backed chair. First the
clothes were dried, sprinkled and rolled
up tight so the dampness would penetrate the
cloth evenly (many of the items were starched) and
placed together in a large basket. Then I got some folded
newspaper and some waxed paper to put on the board. We
had an electric iron, but it was different from the ones today.
The heat could not be regulated. The iron laid flat, so there
was a metal plate for it to rest on. There were two prongs in
the back of the iron to plug the cord into. A dampened finger-
tip tested the iron quickly (with caution) as to the heat. If it
sizzled, the iron was hot. The newspaper was for testing to
see if it was too hot for the clothes. If so, it was allowed to
cool down. When it was usable, the plug was pulled out and
ironing begun. The plug was reinserted as necessary to keep
the iron hot.
Before I was ten years old I was doing large ironings.
Imagine the fun I had ironing my mother’s cotton poplin
nurse’s uniforms! Everything had to be laid flat, doubled, on
the board. Mother was quite stout so they were big and
starched stiff. I had to smooth them out so the side under-
neath would not be creased while ironing. If the iron began to
stick it was run across the waxed paper. When one side was
finished, the process was repeated on the other side.
Mother was not working for awhile and how happy I was
to have her at home, but alas, it wasn’t for long. The day
came when she had to go back to work. Imissed her so much.
I was about eleven years old at the time. She made out a list
of things for me to do each day, and when I got home from
school I looked at my list. First, I was to make all of the beds
for our family of six, tidy up the rooms and wash the
breakfast dishes—there was no time for mak-
ing beds and washing dishes before ev-
eryone left early in the mornings for
work. One of my girlfriends, Ger-
trude, and I sometimes worked
together after school. She had
dishes to do also, so we would
do dishes together at one house
and then go to the other house
and do those. By the time all this
was done, it was time for my next
chore, which was to start supper and
set the table. After supper there were
dishes again—doing the dishes was always
my job unless there was company.
I was permitted to experiment with food in the kitchen.
I used to make fudge sometimes and at times I would make
up my own recipes. One time I ended up with “tootsie rolls”!
Another time I decided to bake a spice cake for a surprise.
Those old recipes were different from today; instead of list-
ing exact measurements, it might say, “Use Crisco the size of
(Continued on page 3)
Vol. 3, No. 5
“And ye are complete in him.” Colossians 2:10
Sept./Oct. 2000
Our Mission Statement: Believing that we can find
completeness in all areas of our lives only “in him, who
is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians
2:10), it is the mission of Hearth to Hearth to provide a
forum for Christian women to reach out to each other in
friendship, with joy and hope; and to encourage each
other to find our completeness in Christ as we sojourn
here on our way to the kingdom.
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Woman to Woman
