Free time is so hard to come by anymore, but when I do have some I love spending time with my friends and family. I especially love visiting my older family members as they tend to have the best stories as well as the best coffee to go with our conversations.
A month ago I was visiting my Great Aunt Doris. She was sharing some stories with me about her days of youth that were spent living on the family farm. It was the late 1930s, the Great Depression was taking place, their home had no running water or electricity and the area they lived in was a very poor part of the country. But as children they didn't realize it. There wasn't internet or television with which they could compare every aspect of their lives to others. Because of this they were content. Their homestead had a creek that ran through the backyard and they used the water to drink, water the garden, cook, clean, and bathe with.
Doris shared a story with me about a day when her mother had her helping to wash the family's laundry. They used a big metal wash tub and washboards to clean their clothing. They owned two washboards, a large one for outer clothing and a small one for underwear and stockings. Since Doris was just a small thing then, she used the small washboard and took care of washing the unmentionables. The wash tub they were using to do their laundry in was the same one that they used for baths, being poor they were unable to afford two separate tubs for these chores.
Doris wanted to wash her own clothes in addition to the underwear she was assigned. She had a bright red sweater that she adored and wore everywhere. It was her nicest piece of clothing. She wanted to hang it up on the line all by herself as children are want to do. While she was trying to hang that sweater up, one of their turkeys must have decided that he did not like the sweater as he came full steam ahead and flogged Doris pretty good. Doris screamed and dropped the sweater and the turkey continued the attack on the sweater, shredding it to bits. Doris's mother started laughing, and laughed herself all the way into the creek. This racket brought all of Doris's siblings and her father running to see what had happened. Doris's daddy started laughing so hard while trying to help her mother up out of the creek he wound up tumbling in with her. Everyone had a good time, except for Doris, who was heartbroken over her little red sweater. To this day Doris despises a turkey.
