Visit this Prairie to see where we lived!

 May is a great time to visit the Prairie, a sea of green grasses sprinkled with red, purple and cream-colored blossoms of Indian paintbrush, arrow-leaved violet and cream wild indigo. Summer brings a constant succession of flowers from pale purple coneflower to rattlesnake master, gayfeather and butterfly milkweed. Regal fritillary butterflies float from flower to flower in search of nectar, while slender glass lizards bask in the warm sunlight. Dickcissels, sedge wrens and Henslow’s sparrows nest among the plants.

A visit to their web site http://mostateparks.com/park/prairie-state-park,  will give you driving directions and a list and dates of the many guided tours you may take while there.

When you go, tell the Park attendant that you read about them through my blog!

Until next time….

Laundry part 2

 I Separated clothing into whites (those cloth diapers that had been rinsed and soaking), mediums, dark and really dirty (like rugs, barn clothes, grungy rags). Saving the delicates for a separate wash, or hand wash them.
 At the end of the washing time, I stopped the washer, turned on the wringer and put the clothes through it one piece at a time.
 As soon as I got all of the items from the washer, I turned it back on and put in the next load of laundry.
I repositioned the wringer over the rinse tub and rinsed the finished load by swishing it up and down or side to side in the rinse water, running the rinsed items through the wringer and into the second rinse tub or a waiting basket, and then repeating the action.
Hanging the clothes on the line out north of the house was sometime a challenge. I would put baby Mike then only 2-3 months old, on top of the wet clothes in summer time and Ken would walk beside me hanging on to my skirt. ( I don’t remember ever wearing trousers! It just was not done by women then!)

With the laundry hanging out to dry I would use the rinse water to mope the kitchen and back porch floor, then carry it outside and pour it on what flowers I had planted around the back porch during the summer months. Water was conserved a lot because if the cistern went dry (and sometimes that happened a lot during dry weather, because we only got what rain water drained into it from the rooftop of the house) Morris had to get Uncle John’s truck and put a large tank on it that he had for this purpose, and go to Liberal, which was about 7 miles away and haul a tank of water back and put it into the cistern.

Later Morris bought a thing I plugged into a socket and put into the washing machine to heat it! I know now that it must have been very dangerous; however I burned it out without ever getting burned from it myself. They discontinued that item in later years.

After the clothes dried on the clothesline I would carry them in and iron. There were no permanent press clothes back then. Morris wore Overalls when he was farming. I usually didn’t get around to the ironing until the following day. I didn’t like to iron, so lots of thinks were just hung on hangers or folded. I had three pair of pant stretcher that you put in the legs of the pants while they were damp and as they dried it left a cutting edge crease. I usually starched those work clothes because the dirt usually washed out of them better if it was on top of that starch. Our clothes had that clean smell of the sweet Prairie flowers when I brought them in to fold. How nice those sheets smelled on the first night when you crawled into bed. By the time the days work was finished I was ready for that bed too! Now if only those babies would sleep through the night!

LAUNDRY FOR TWO BABIES

This is a book about people who are shaped by the places they live and the times they've lived through.  I hope I have painting a portrait of the place we chose to live in and loved.

Laundry and bottles for two babies was not easy. Formula had to be mixed. Bottles had to be washed and sterilized, then stored in the frig.

Morris had purchased a used wringer washer with an electric motor on it and a double tub on a stand.

These sat out on the back porch. I had to pump a large pan of water at the pitcher pump that was on the left hand side of the sink, then carry it across the room to the small apartment sized electric stove to heat. While the water heated I had to fill the two rinse tubs with water. No water hoses then. Had to pump and carry it bucket by bucket to those tubs that were also on the back porch. When the water was hot I carried it out to the machine on the back porch, then filling the swishing tub with dirty clothes that hit the suds one by one with a satisfying plop and burble. Like a hungry monster, the washing machine pulled the clothes downward into the steaming, soapy water. After a moment, they’d rise like undersea monsters, pale colors and shades of white, mounded like the smooth back of some undersea creature… then they’d swish and swoop downward, only to rise and do it again.