Mom was busy with the little ones or doing mending or sewing. In the meantime, the dirty dishes waited. We also did lots of cartwheels, skated the sidewalk with our one pair of clamp-on skates, played badminton, climbed trees, played Gray Wolf, Kick the Can and Hide and Seek. If they caught it, they’d sneak over and try to hit us with the ball.
We’d play “Andy I Over,” throwing the ball over the washhouse roof to someone on the other side. On nice summer evenings it was tempting to run outside and play for a while before dark. Oh the dinner dishes we had after the evening meal! That was my sister’s and my job. My own daughter Tanya scrubbing the sink after helping with dishes. Mom would graciously fix them an egg sandwich and tin can of chocolate milk. Sometimes hobos would walk past on the busy highway and ask for food. With a large family and a wringer type washer, laundry days were usually an all-day affair. ‘Twas great news if one of those big semi’s had a tire blow-that gave Mom fuel for a hot fire and the water heated quickly. The next morning, Mom got up early to start a fire to heat the water. It took quite a few trips to get the kettle filled. The night before laundry day, my sister Bonnie and I would carry buckets of water from our outside well that had a small gas engine to pump water. Dad built a washhouse a little ways out from the house, with a big iron kettle over an enclosed fire pit. We didn’t have running water, so we did the running.
My sister, brother, and I would sit in the yard to scale and clean them. Many times, we’d catch a big bowl of fish. One or two of us kids would always go along. Often after work in the summer, he would take the horse and buggy with his trailer and a big homemade wooden fishing boat, and went to a small local lake to fish. We also had five nice pear trees bearing pears to eat and can. Mom was always there to help and teach us how. We put on the lids and gave the jars a boiling hot water bath for 20 minutes in a blue granite canner. Next a hot sugar syrup was poured into the cans. Then we stacked the halves nicely in clean quart glass jars, face down.
To can them, we cut the peaches in half, pried out the stone, and peeled them. In the fall Mom would also order six or seven bushels of peaches from somewhere. We also had a big garden: lots of planting, weeding and harvesting. But we did get a new red Western Flyer, the Cadillac of bikes back in the day. It kept us “out of mischief.” Dad promised us a new bike after all the work one summer, but I think we waited two summers, the funds must have been low. In the fall we husked the corn and brought it to the barn with Dad’s help. We kids kept most of the weeds out of the corn. We grew about two acres of field corn for the cows and horses.
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