"Mom"

At seventy years of age, I spend alot of time looking back over the wonderful years of my youth. I remember how soft moms skin felt as she picked me up amd held me on her lap. Hers was the softest of any one I knew. She was always in the kitchen cooking, which filled our house and most of the neighborhood with a heavenly aroma. As a small child I would stand at her side watching her cook, learning how she created the delicious food that found its way to our meals on our old, wooden green and white kitchen table. The counter tops she worked on were painted cement and the white kitchen sink had a drainboard. This is where she washed our hair. She liked to rinse our hair in vinegar. I didn't like it and always said no bingity. She did it anyway. If for any reason the food she put on the table didn't appeal to you, you just waited it out and found something else later. My dad gave her fifty dollars a week to buy groceries. When food was rationed during World War II, she had to figure out ways to get by. We were lucky because my dad had a job and we had stamp books we used to buy food. Mom also canned all the fresh vegetables grown in my dads big garden. She would clean them, put them in glasss jars and finally put them in a big steamer thing that sat on top of her gas stove. After a time they would be sealed and ready for our dark cool basement. Most of the basemant was taken up by our coal furnace. It was always exciting when they came with the coal and opened a basement window for the slide that moved the coal to our coal bin next to the furnace. Moms washing machine stood next to the furnace. It had an agitator in a tub to wash the clothes and then she took a wooden stick about the size of a broom handle and picked up the wet clothes and fed them into to rollers that squeezed the water out of them. Then she went to the clothesline in our back yard and with clothespins hung them up tp dry. There was a wooden poll brace that helped hold the clothesline up high so the wet clothes would never touch the ground. There was also a cloth bag of wooden clothespins that hung on the clothesline from a hanger type thing. When they were dry she would gather them up and put them in her clothes basket and return them to the house. Some were sorted out and dampened with water from a glass bottle with a cork sprinkler. Later she would set up her wooden ironing board and iron the wrinkles out of the clothes. She was not one to spend time on the telephone. Of course, back then you had the big wooden phone behind the swinging kitchen door and you had to go through an operator to make a call. We would say this is 678R we want to call 830P. So it was until we later got a dial phone. Mom would to go to the piano in the dining room and play all the songs she knew by heart. She could not read music but, could find any song on the black and white piano eys in just a few tries. My favorite was when she played " Ain't She Sweet," and "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue," while I tapped dance to them. She also use to pile a big blue, white fringed scarf on my head so I could be Carmon Maranda, my favorite movie star. I loved to go to the Princess Movie Theatre up town and so did mom. We use to walk to it, even at night. She had one dress I still remember because it was so beautiful. It was a rusty, brown color and had braid made from the same fabric as the dress twisted into a pattern to make pockets and trim. When she had had enough of her three screaming daughters she would take a walk. One time she had what they called then a nervous break down. It scared me because she was all of a sudden resting in bed all day. I was not allowed in her room and remember peaking in to see her. Eileen, a relative of ours came to take care of us kids until mom got better. She did. Dr Evers, our local town doctor made house calls. When my folks called him when I was very sick, he came to the house and said my appendix had to come out. I went to the hospital with him. By the time my folks got there I was already almost ready for the surgery. My mom liked and trusted Dr. Evers. Mom made most of our clothes on her Singer Sewing Machine. She went to Goodwill and found old mens suits. She liked beautiful fabrics. She made us clothes from the suits and put white pique collars and cuffs on them. They were beautiful. When we got home from Sunday School and Church we had to take off our good clothes and vasoline our black, patent leather shoes. Since I was the youngest, I got all the hand me downs. During the Winter months she would roll blankets and make them in a U shape and put them around the top of our heads as we slept so the snow that came in around our upstairs windows would not get on our heads. We had two bedrooms and one bathroom(toilet, tub and sink)for the five of us. With four women, I never remember my dad being in the bathroom. My mom always gave food and water to the tramps that followed the New York Central railroad tracks that ran behind our house. My dad had told her not to because they had a way of marking the houses that helped them and he said they would all show up at her door. He was right. When they came to the old wooden screen door at the back of the house she made us stay in the kitchen. The door locked with a small metal hook. This would never do today. We would sneek over to the doorway and look at the tramps. It always scared us because as with the Gypsys that came by, mom told us they steal children. My dad became a car dealer after being a car mechanic for many years. My mom was always driving whatever used cars he got in as a trade in. When she would go to the A&P Grocery Store aften times she would forget what the car she arrived in looked like. Once she got in a car that was exactly like the one she arrived in but not the right one. It took her awhile to figure it out. Once when she was taking us to Toledo, Ohio to go shopping, just after they invented power steering we drove into the city with two flat front tires. The guy that had the parking lot in the city was a cousins of moms and couldn't believe we had driven so far on two flat tires. Mom said she thought it steered hard. He fixed the tires while we shopped. I can't remember the funny things that confused her, except for the add that was ballet shoes for Buick Automobiles, she remembered as tap dancing shoes for Ford. Her sense of humor saved us kids many times. We didn't do alot of hugging, but we knew she loved us. She was always there when we got home from school. Thr first word out of our mouthes when we got home was mom. Her cooking was the best and I am grateful I was able to remember how she did it as I sttod at her knee watching. She always handed me a piece of raw potato or carrot. She would help all who needed it. She attended Defiance College and taugnt in a one room school house. At her funeral at 88, some of her old students came by to tell us what a difference she made in their lives. She sure made a difference in our lives. She was the kindest, most unselfish person I have ever known.