Another thing I remember about my mother was that she laughed at everything. If something bad happened, she laughed. If she was sad, she found a reason to laugh. Sometimes her laughter would annoy me, and I would snap at her, "Mom! It's not funny!" To this she would say, "I have to laugh, Honey. If I didn't laugh I would have to cry, and I don't want to cry. There are already too many tears in this world." Of course, this just annoyed me more because I didn't understand yet. A child doesn't normally endure enough suffering in its life to really understand what she meant. As an adult, and as a mother, I learned, though my suffering was mostly self-inflicted. Hers wasn't.
So, singing and laughter were constant in my home as I grew up. My parents almost never fought, and if they did, it certainly wasn't in front of me. I do remember one morning when I was about five that I woke up to find my mom sitting at the breakfast table crying. When I asked her why she was crying she said there was no reason and that everything was fine. I knew that my dad had just left for work, so I believed it had something to do with him. Soon she was singing, and my world continued on tranquilly, though I never forgot that morning. I imagine that I remember it because it had never happened before.
There is only one other time that I found my mom crying because of my dad. That was many years later when I was in my late teens, and I knew exactly why she was crying. Actually, my mom and dad got along very well. The reason for that is that my mother did everything to please him. She never argued; she never nagged; she never did anything contrary to what he wanted, so there was never any reason for them to not get along. I know that she didn't agree with him on all subjects, but no one ever knew it. I never knew until after my dad died, and she and I would talk for long hours about so many things. There is so much that a child can't understand, and shouldn't have to understand. The emotions that come with the truth is hard enough for an adult to deal with; it can destroy a child.
There are so many wonderful memories from my childhood of my mom and dad. One of the best ones is being in my bed at night. Just around the corner from my bed was the front door leading out onto a big front porch. There mom and dad would sit for hours at night talking and laughing. Sometimes he would sing to her, and sometimes they would sing together. Sometimes he would play his harmonica and she would sing, or she would just listen as he played. I remember feeling so happy. They made me feel so secure in my world.
They did lots of social things when I was very young. There were card parties at the house or at some friends' homes. There were some kind of Lodge parties that we would go to. My dad was a Mason, so maybe these parties had something to do with that. I don't remember. I was never left behind when they socialized. I would either play with other children, or I would play by myself and eventually go to sleep. The next thing I would remember would be daddy lifting me out of the car and carrying me into the house. I love that memory. How can such a simple act be such a splendid memory? Mom's back was bad, so she could never lift me.
Mom spent most of the time in the kitchen. She baked a lot, and, of course, meals were always cooked from scratch. There was not much canned foods in our pantry unless she had grown it and canned it herself. I don't think she let me help her very much, but I always got to lick the bowls and the beaters. When she peeled potatoes I would beg for a slice of raw potato, and when she made the very best lemon meringue pie in the whole world, bar none, I would always get the lemon rinds with the insides sprinkled with a little sugar. She was a very good cook and was especially good at baking pies and cookies and cobblers. She baked cakes from scratch. No mixes. But she always had trouble with cakes falling in the oven or being heavy. I still liked them. But daddy would always tease her about her cakes. She would cut him a piece of cake, and he would say, "Be careful! Don't drop that! It'll put a hole in the floor."
Every Monday morning I would awaken to the sound of my mom singing some hymn or singing along with the radio, the smell of bread being made, and the sound of the wringer washing machine churning away at our clothes. By the end of the day we would have wonderful loaves of bread, a couple dozen hamburger buns, and the very best cinnamon rolls you ever tasted. They were even better than her pies. In fact, there were people who would pay mom to make pans of cinnamon rolls for them. All the clothes would be washed, hung outside to dry, and folded into clothes baskets for ironing on Tuesday. The bread was made, the clothes were clean, the tubs all emptied of water, and mom was still singing. Maybe she wasn't singing as loud as she was in the morning, but she was still singing. In the midst of all this she made three meals and washed all the dishes by hand. Breakfast was always cooked cereal, bacon and eggs, pancakes, or waffles. Dad and I both came home for dinner (lunch), and it was always ready and hot when we walked in. Supper was the biggest meal. On Mondays mom's day was long, usually ending at about nine in the evening. At this point she could sit down. The television was on all day for company, but she never sat down to watch it.
To this day, I have found only one person who makes cinnamon rolls like my mom made them, nor as good. I never got her recipe, but one person did. Vicki Beckner was a good friend of mine who was also very close to my mom, and she was fortunate enough to get it and makes them to this day. I give Vicki a bad time about not sharing the recipe with me, and I think I've just about worn her down about letting me have it. But Vicki is the baker, not me. I actually would want it for my daughter who is an excellent baker just like her grandmother.
In the summer there was no air-conditioning to keep her cool, only a window fan. In winter she hung the clothes outside in the freezing cold and the clothes would "freeze-dry". Mom's fingers would freeze along with them. If it was raining, the clothes were hung on racks to dry in the dining room where the only heat in the house was. Nothing stood in the way of wash day. And there was never one word of complaining or moaning. She never asked for an automatic washer or dryer. She was happy to have what she had.
Tuesday morning started just like every other morning, at about 4:30. Again I would awaken to my mom's voice singing "He Lives" or "In the Garden" or maybe some Eddie Arnold song on the radio. Mom always called Eddie Arnold her boyfriend. She loved his music. Others that she liked were, Jim Reeves ("He'll Have To Go"), Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Patti Page and Perry Como. One of mom's favorite songs was "Tennessee Waltz" by Patti Page. After breakfast was finished and the dishes washed the ironing board went up, and most of the rest of the day was spent ironing all the clothes from the day before as she watched her soap operas and Art Linkletter and all the game shows. Oh, and I forgot to mention that before the clothes were ironed, each one was sprinkled with water and rolled up so they would be easier to iron. If they weren't wet enough when she ironed them she sprinkled them again.
The sprinkler was an old Big Chief pop bottle with a sprinkler head on it that daddy had made for her. When I came home from school I was allowed to help her iron. I loved to iron. I got to iron all the handkerchiefs, there were 25-30 of them, all the pillow cases and some of the sheets. These were all ironed in those days, but I couldn't always handle the sheets. They were too big. By the time I grew enough to be able to handle them I didn't like to iron anymore. When I was ten or so I started learning to iron my blouses and skirts. They weren't too hard. But ironing dad's clothes were tough, and I didn't normally get in on that. All of his shirts were long sleeve, winter and summer, and they had to be ironed. Dad's work pants were dried with pants pressers in them. These were metal frames shaped like the pant leg and stretched inside the pant leg to make them dry without wrinkles and with a straight crease down the front and back. These were wonderful time savers for my mom so that she wouldn't have to iron them. Once in a while I see pants pressers hanging in antique stores. They bring back good memories. Oh, and dad's underwear? They were ironed too.
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