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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums23 photos from the '30s and '40s that prove your grandparents were so much more badass than you.
LINK to full article1. Your grandma, doing her laundry by hand in a metal bucket on top of a rickety wooden barrel
So, you know. Keep complaining.
Most likely, your grandma stuck it out in the cabbage fields until the beginning of World War II, when she and your grandpa found better paying industrial work that allowed them to move to the big city. Though if she was one of the thousands of the mostly Latino and Asian migrant workers who stuck around, there's a good chance she was part of one of the biggest workers' rights victories of all time two decades later, when many of California's agriculture laborers successfully agitated for their rights to unionize behind Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers.
Either way, total badass.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Fed the whole damn family, and usually some more, during the depression, with very little. My maternal grandmother had a dairy bottling business in the basement and my grandfather sold the milk, often taking nothing in payment. And after she sterilized the bottels, filled them with milk, capped them and packed them in the truck, she cleaned houses for wealthy people. With 10 kids. My paternal grandmother fed 7 kids and her little brother with almost no money coming in.
And they both often has food for the homeless that came knocking at the door for a meal.
Bad ass!
Ex Lurker
(3,808 posts)She was a college graduate and a school teacher, but lived in a rural area, and that's how things were done until the late fifties. My grandfather cut crossties in the woods as a young man. He gashed his foot with an axe when he was 19 and had to ride a mule into town to have it sewed up. He had the scar all his life.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Ex Lurker
(3,808 posts)My grandparents and all their siblings-and there must have been 25 or more altogether-all left the farm as soon as they could, either for formal education or blue collar jobs in the cities. It was a hard life. In later years they reminisced about the good times, but they were never sentimental about how difficult it was, and they didn't miss that part.
marym625
(17,997 posts)My maternal grandmother was the 5th of 11. My maternal grandfather was the 3rd of 13. My mom was the last of 10 and my dad was the third of seven.
SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)She said she never used a washing machine , she said she cleaned all the clothes by hand in a huge tin pail. Bless her soul.
marym625
(17,997 posts)My maternal grandmother started having kids in 1915 at the ripe old age of 25. She had 10 kids between then and 1938. She and my paternal grandmother still had that old wringing type of washing machine in their basements when I was little.
I remember how much my paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother loved and respected each other. Man I miss those beautiful people.
My maternal grandfather died before my parents were married. But I often heard the story of dinner in there home, my maternal grandparents I mean. She would say, in her beautiful Irish brouge, "how was it Da?" And he would respond, "As sweet as the hand that fed it to me."
SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)Hard working and never too tired to show you love. Gosh I miss those syrup sandwiches grandma use to make me.Oh and the homemade ice cream she would make and get from the first snow. Those were the days.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)then. I was visiting a cousin one summer when this guy showed up at that door. I later learned that he was a hobo who had been stopping at their home since the early 40s to get something to eat and have a safe place to sleep in the hay loft in the barn. In return he sharpened their knives.
We have lost a lot of the skills they had.
marym625
(17,997 posts)And even more humanity and humility
jwirr
(39,215 posts)stop by for dinner and sleeping anywhere on their property today. Also I was impressed by the old man when he insisted on doing something in return.
marym625
(17,997 posts)There were many customers with children who couldn't afford to pay. He couldn't afford not to be paid but he forgave the debt anyway. But more often than not, something was given in exchange. Can you imagine any corporation doing that now?
jwirr
(39,215 posts)went into town and stopped a every home he knew were having trouble. There is such difference today from then. They worked very hard for what they had yet they had a generosity that was unbelievable.
The same generosity that was so apparent in the politics of FDR. That is the heart of Bernie's platform today. Lord, I hope we can learn to love again.
marym625
(17,997 posts)I hope so too.
Peace and #FeelTheBern
MADem
(135,425 posts)newfie11
(8,159 posts)I remember my mom washing like this. Heating the water in a bucket to add.
When wringer washers were available everyone was thrilled.
Times have changed for better in the laundry area.
Omaha Steve
(99,073 posts)You had to go out in the weather to get to the basement.
KentuckyWoman
(6,666 posts)the little kids had to sweep the dirt floor and clean the cob webs out of the outhouse.
I live in that house now. The floor has concrete now and we added indoor plumbing and full electric.
I'm still using that same wringer washer but if it breaks again not sure where I'll get the parts. I have a modern gas dryer but mostly only use it for towels. Still have clotheslines all over the basement for the wintertime but most of it goes outside the rest of the year.
Monday is still wash day around these parts.....
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)pacalo
(24,721 posts)That reminded me of a Ralph Kramden line to an exhausted Alice: "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times -- make two trips instead of one!"
tularetom
(23,664 posts)Once she accidentally chopped off her own finger cutting firewood, wrapped a towel around her hand, picked up the finger and rode five miles on horseback to the doctors office to see if they could sew it back on. Of course they couldn't, but she loved to tell the story.
She was the oldest of 12 kids, born in Switzerland to German speaking parents and went all the way to the fourth grade. She was a dead shot and an accomplished musician, and she played the organ in church (with 9 fingers). She didn't suffer fools gladly and she got pissed off at we kids when she thought we were whining or feeling sorry for ourselves.
I can't remember her being sick a day in her life (at least she never fessed up to it). She was the most positive and optimistic person I've ever known, a major influence on my siblings and myself and the only grandma I ever knew (my dad was an orphan).
She lived beyond 100 and died of Alzheimers in Kentucky shortly before the end of the last century.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)roguevalley
(40,656 posts)ringer. Ask my mom. I still remember it like it was an ibm computer.
zalinda
(5,621 posts)and use it. I've taught my son to use it too. We used it for about 2 years until we could save to buy a used automatic washer. The only problem with it was the pump was shot, so we attached a hose to it and used gravity to empty it, that took a long time. I'll never get rid of it.
Oh, and my fancy brand new front load washing machine, that cost $700, lasted about 5 years, then I couldn't open the door anymore. Cost more to fix it, than my used machine I just got. New things are not necessarily better.
Z
1939
(1,683 posts)You attached a hose to the faucet of the laundry sink to fill the washer. When you drained the washer, there was a hose attached to the side that you unhooked from a bracket then lowered to the basement drain to empty the washer. My job was to use the hose attached to the laundry sink to wash the residue of the suds down the drain and get them off the basement floor. I also held the clothes pins while my mother hung up the wash either in the back yard (summer) or in the basement. All of thge bed sheets just hung there in the basement and took forever to dry.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)Luckly my mom go it stopped but had to go for stitches. The doctor told her he saw lots of kids that got the whole arm in it.
forest444
(5,902 posts)My great-grandparents on my mother's side were dairy farmers, and guess who took care of the deliveries? My 5 year-old grandpa, circa 1923, on a horse drawn buggy as he went from house to house. Once the horse balked and overturned everything - butter, milk bottles, grandpa, and all. He salvaged what he could, and kept going, apologizing to the customers whose deliveries he couldn't meet that day.
I doubt his childhood was very different from the childhoods of most DUers' grandparents. Survival itself was a real art form back then for most people. It's sad that the Bushes and Koches of the world are hypocritically trying to push society back to that state - not because it wasn't virtuous (it was, and it wasn't), but because we wouldn't survive. Our elders were a hardy, resourceful lot; we, for the most part, are just not.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)nt
jwirr
(39,215 posts)and my dad who was 12 years old was put in charge of moving the animals (beef, dairy, pigs, sheep, goats). He road a horse herding the animals all the way for 20 miles. I cannot imagine our kids being trusted to do that today.
Not necessarily that they could not do it today but that we have grown to believe that they couldn't.
I was born in the early 40s and I remember a lot of what was in those pictures. I actually cooked on a wood stove, heated with wood, washed clothes with a Maytag washer and hung them out to dry. Helped my grandparents to garden and gather eggs. I was little but I experienced much of this up to the mid 50s and even into the 60s. My daughter was born in 1968 and she was a baby when I was still cooking on that wood stove.
forest444
(5,902 posts)We're all as progressives absolutely opposed to child labor, of course (unlike many of our right-wing friends - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/14/944565/-Now-Republicans-want-to-repeal-child-labor-laws).
Nevertheless, keeping kids today in touch with the earth is probably more important than ever. No matter how far we've come it's always good to go back to nature.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)try to grow as much of our own food as possible and he lives on the farm (40 acres like my dad started out on) and does most of the care of the animals. He loves it. But unlike my grandfather he still has to go to work 8-9 hours a day to be able to afford today's lifestyle.
Our gardens are spread out on all our home yards so all of us take part in that.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The nearest place to do laundry was 11 miles away. The first 5 over a single lane dirt road winding down a mountain from an elevation of 6000 feet.
Lights were candles, oil lights and a 12v system powered by old car batteries.
Response to Algernon Moncrieff (Original post)
Snobblevitch This message was self-deleted by its author.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)She had an outhouse.
The thing I remember about it most was the spiders.
We rebelled at about age 8-9 as all we did on our vacation with our aunt was work.
One more story. One night I heard a fairly large animal running around my bedroom in the middle of the night. I told my aunt and she told me I was imagining things. Later that day I walked by and noticed my aunt had the bed pulled away from the wall and was shoving big rocks into a hole in the wall.
Raccoon? I don't even want to know.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)but my paternal grandma had a mini farm complete with chickens in her urban backyard and I remember her wringing them, then cutting the heads off once they'd stopped moving (and it was less messy) and hanging the chickens on the clothesline for the blood to drain into the garden soil. The garden soil was coal black and fantastic stuff.
My maternal grandma and my mother lived on oatmeal 3 times a day during the worst of the Depression, but they kept their home and didn't take in boarders, something which would have been a horrible comedown to her. When my mother was old enough to get her first lousy job, she said her big treat was a fried egg sandwich for lunch every day, cost a nickel in NYC.
Both of them did the wash with wringer washers in the cellar, state of the art for the time. My paternal grandma made her own brown soap and the stuff would take the skin off you if you tried to wash with it. She made white soaps for the bath, dyed some of them with food coloring so that the suds would be that color, too, fascinating to a little kid.
I remember the old houses didn't really have closets, they had wardrobes with pegs, and even my well to do grandparents only owned 3 or 4 dresses--and a lot of aprons. The Sunday best was silk, georgette for one and crepe for the other.
But yes, they were badasses in their own way. So am I.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)although I thought honey was used, not maple syrup. Probably varies depending on local availability.
ETA: I think I read about it here, not sure: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Food_of_a_Younger_Land.html?id=kCRVWMcNPEwC&source=kp_cover&hl=en
bemildred
(90,061 posts)But I found that on Google.
It's a bit tart, but it really does work. Great for electrolytes too, though I don't suppose they would have put it that way back then. I remember when I worked in a sawmill when I was young, they had salt pills for us, but I think switchel is better.
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)my grandfather passé. I COOKED ON IT. i LOVED that stove. more than the electric.
brer cat
(24,402 posts)I loved to play in the gutters with leaf "ships" after a rain.
My sister and I would draw house diagrams in the dirt to play with our dolls. Without a good imagination, there would have been very little to play with.
leftofcool
(19,460 posts)There was a time in this country when people worked really hard.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)Your grandma, rocking out on a giant guitar
These boys are all like, "Yo! Play that Woody Guthrie, Miss!" But your grandma just frowns and keeps rolling with the church music. Eventually, they like it. They always do.
She reminds me of that Kim Davis woman. Do you see the resemblance?
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)Notice granny on the right hand side, behind the other singers.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)about how much we've lost regarding how the world once worked.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)I was dropped off, without a car, at my grandmother-in-laws little rural place while my husband left to work out of state.
She explained calmly that her old washing machine couldn't handle diapers. She set me up out in the yard with a bucket and a washboard and a hose.
I was there for 3 months.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)And I'll tell you why. My grandmother slaved all her life, coming to this country early in the last century with nothing and knowing not a word of English, and eventually owning and running a little corner grocery. She scrubbed and cleaned and laundered and butchered chickens and made sausages to sell in the store and stocked and ran it and then in her spare time rolled out strudel on the kitchen table and sewed. I don't know when she was able to sleep.
When we were newlyweds my husband and I moved to go to graduate school an hour or so away from where she lived. We'd go to visit her occasionally, always unannounced so that we wouldn't put her to any trouble, and yet she'd always have six giant pots of food on the stove ready for us. (How did that happen?).
Once, we brought her to our little apartment and made dinner for her. After dinner, my husband got up to clear the table and began doing the dishes. My grandmother was amazed. That is wonderful! she announced. How did I teach him to do that? It's just the way we do things now, Grandma, I told her. She then proceeded to ponder aloud on how much burden had fallen on her (and other women) in her time. She regretted, she said, that she'd never thought to ask my grandfather to help. She liked the new equality. She was proud that her granddaughter was getting an advanced degree and had found a partner who shared equally in the chores.
Let's not romanticize the hard lives our grandmothers lived. They certainly didn't. And they would have traded places with us gladly.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Phentex
(16,330 posts)that's a very interesting story!
jwirr
(39,215 posts)of doing some of those "women's" chores. Grandmother and my mother and all the other women in the family often did the canning together. They would go to one of the homes bringing all their produce and jars and equipment. Then they would set up kind of an assembly line to do the job.
This did not involve the men until it was time to bring the full jars home but it did make the job more enjoyable and I think easier.
MowCowWhoHow III
(2,103 posts)A policeman judges an ankle competition in England (1930)
Dude girls from the American west (1920s)
Stunt performer jumping across two embankments in El Paso, Texas, ca. 1920
OxQQme
(2,550 posts)Born in 1940 in Los Angeles. Lived in San Fernando Valley/Burbank.
I checked out this map and found out something I had no knowledge of.
Federal Subsistence Homsteads ---> http://photogrammar.yale.edu/search/results.php?start=0&search=&pname=&lot=&van=&state=California&county=Los%20Angeles&city=&year_start=1935&month_start=0&year_stop=1943&month_stop=12
My left hand fore finger got permanently damaged when I, at 6 years old, as an inquisitive youngster, got crushed between the gears at the end of the wringer rollers of 'Mom's' electric Maytag.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)I didn't find out about this until her funeral. She and grandpa moved from Arkansas to the new state of Oklahoma when she was 18.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)They are pictured here at the family homestead with a number of other people. My grandmother, who lived 106 years, is the small girl in the center of the picture:
~original
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)she hung it on the line. She did benefit from Social Security when FDR initiated it so she was able to live in modest retirement. My mother had an automatic washer but she still hung her clothes on the line. I helped. My mother, a stay at home housewife, enrolled in business classes in community college, which were tuition free back then, when I grew up and left home, and she went to work for the first time in her life at the age of 46. She didn't live long enough to retire. Ironically, it's me who often does laundry in the sink much like that woman and hangs it in the bathroom. Even though I have access to washer and dryer, I don't always use it. I also struggle to survive on Social Security myself these days because the COLAS have not kept up with the actual cost of living. It seems we have gone full circle and are back at the beginning of a new Great Depression.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)They were married in 1946 in OK. It was what then qualified as an interracial marriage and they had to move to CA to get away from the discrimination.
My Grandma gave birth to my Mom in the hospital in Hanford without another human being in the room. Something happened and they all had to leave while she was in labor. When she told me that I was in awe. I always wonder how many women have given birth while they were alone.
Her and my Grandpa worked in the fields picking whatever was going at the moment and in order to keep from losing her job she had to take my Mom along in a basket AND keep up. She went to night school and learned office type stuff and became a Secretary at North American/North American Rockwell/Rockwell International working on Apollo, B-1, Skylab, and Space Shuttle programs. Retired from Rockwell after 25 years.
She had this huge scar on her quadricep that was from one of her brothers throwing a hatchet at her.
She died from Alzheimer's. It was like 20 years after she lost her wits that she passed. 20 years robbed from all of us. I fucking hate that disease.
On top of everything else, it's my personal belief that she was gay. I've tried and tried and can't think of a single solitary thing that was even slightly feminine about her. Nada. That's not to say that I didn't love her with all my heart and wouldn't give my soul for one more day in her company.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)....in the early 1900s. I do not know how my petite grandmother did all of that work and provisioned for a family of 6 on that cold barren prairie.
I believe my maternal grandparents' greatest challenge came when they sent all their children off to WW2 and their oldest son was a prisoner of war of the Japanese Imperial Army from the time Corregidor fell until the Philippines were liberated -- years later. He weighed 96 pounds when liberated and he had his leg sawed off by an Army surgeon in a tunnel there after it became gangrenous due to an injury suffered in the bombardment. He lived to be nearly 90. That's badass, too.
Mendocino
(7,431 posts)Paternal Grandfather 1887-1966
Born on a farm oldest of seven boys and two girls, dropped out of school after 6th grade, worked full time on farms, carpentry, lumbering, construction. Joined army at the age of 30, shipped out to France. Served in an engineering unit, often building entrenchments, underground bunkers and bridges. Wounded twice, once by artillery, the other from an airplane straffing. Spent the rest of his life as a cabinet maker and farmer.
Paternal Grandmother 1898-1992
Born in an actual log cabin. The youngest of four boys and three girls. They moved to a more modern house at the age of 6. Father was a farmer and justice of the peace. Took in laundry, midwife, cook, seamstress. Maker of the worlds best pancakes.
Maternal Grandfather 1901-1990
Born in Germany, had two sisters and two brothers. Both the sisters, one brother and both parents died in a two year period from 1918-20 due to the worldwide Spanish flu outbreak and basically starvation in the post war. He served as a 15 year old policeman in wartime Germany. He left for the USA in 1924, getting a good job here working for a railroad, despite hardly speaking a word of English. Became mayor of a small town in Ohio in the 50's. First person that ever took me fishing.
Maternal Grandmother 1899-1985
Also born in Germany, the sister with two older brothers. Came to America alone in 1923. Had an uncle in PA. He took her in, she worked as a nanny for a while. Grandpa and Grandma had known each other in Germany, they were able to reconnect here. Her parents remained in Europe. She only saw her father once after immigrating here, when they visited here somewhere around 1935. He died just before the war started. Her mother moved here in 1948 and died in 1954.
Far different times.