Usually I filled the tub with water from the well outside on the back porch and left it to warm through the daytime, then we took turns bathing after dark. First the boys, then me, then Daddy was last. After a day in the fields he was very dirty!
One day it was hot and I had taken the boys for a walk down in the pasture where a little branch ran. It was alkaline water that drained off the coal pits that were south of our land. It was shallow enough so I could sit down in it and it was only up to my waist. Ken, who was only 2 yr old and Mike was about 6 months and still in diapers. I stripped to my undies and let the boys go nude. We were enjoying the cool water when Morris drove in the drive up at the house. He heard us laughing and playing and came on down… stripping off his clothes as he crossed the fence and laughing as he stepped into the water with us. Yes, the family that bathes together stays together. This year is the 59th year we have been enjoying our life together…or as he says, with a grin on his face…’a couple of those years were good years!’
The principal source of heat in the wintertime was the wood or coal stove positioned in the corner of the living room, as the chimney was in the middle of the house, with access from both the kitchen and the west bedroom, although we only had the one coal stove for heat. It was not so enjoyable to take a bath in a galvanized tub set out on the floor and filled with water heated on the nearby stove.
After supper the tub was placed on the worn living room floor in front of the stove.
The living room became the bathroom for the whole evening while we took turns taking our bath. I draped a sheet over the backs of several kitchen chairs pulled close to the tub. This not only gave a little privacy, but also kept the drafts off as we bathed.
The tub was half filled with water heated in a big pail on the stove. I always bathed the boys first. When they were dried, in their jammies, and in their beds it was my turn. I was small enough then to be able to sit in the tub and soak away some of the aches and pains of lifting two babies and fixing meals for Morris and usually Uncle John when they were working up here at the ranch. Then it was Morris’s turn to soak away the field dirt that was impossible to avoid. After putting on his nightclothes he gathered up his dirty overalls and put them to soak in the used, but still soapy, water for the night. The tub was pulled over near the back door and those clothes were put into the washing machine On Monday.
