On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 12:29:59 -0500, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Nov 2018 08:40:41 +0700, John B. slocomb
wrote:

Of course, back in those days I never heard of a "working mother"
either. Married women were at home to take care of the house and
children, prepare the food and in many cases make the clothing.

And feed the hired help. One of Mom's stories was about a city girl
who married a farmer. Her husband told her that there would be a
thrashing crew, but her first clue that she was expected to feed them
was hungry men coming up her walk.

Fortunately, they were also dirty men. While they were washing up she
opened a few cans of tomato juice and made soup. While they were
eating that, she cooked something else, and got them out the door
thinking that serving a meal in installments was a fancy city way.

Another of Mom's tales about resourceful women was of a feeble-minded
housemaid who couldn't learn which knob on the gas stove controlled
which burner.

So she turned a knob at random, and put her pot on the one that lit
up.

That last describes my stove efforts exactly. Unless my wife helps me,
of course :-)


Regarding young wives.

When I was stationed at Bangor, Maine (in the 1960's) a local lad
who'd joined the Air Force came to me (his Sergeant) asking what he
could do about his wife...

It seems that he'd married a girl from Massachusetts or Connecticut,
or one of them foreign places and brought her home to Maine when he
was transferred back there.

Now he, being an energetic young guy had bought a piece of property
about 10 or 15 miles north of Bangor and set out to build a house.
He'd got the foundations and cellar dug and cemented and as it was
getting along toward Fall he just roofed over the cellar with a
tarpaper roof and figured that they could live there for the winter
and he'd finish the house the next year.

They hadn't moved to their new house more then a month when his wife
said that she wanted to "go home to mother" and he'd come to his
Sergeant for advise...

He said that he'd done everything he could to make it easy for his
wife... he'd dug the well only about 50 feet behind the cellar and
even built a windlass so she wouldn't have to haul the water up by
hand. He'd built a nice little wood shed" just at the head of the
stairs" and made sure it was always stocked with wood, even split the
kindling. And, he'd been filling the lamps himself as his wife didn't
like the smell of kerosene...

He couldn't understand what was the matter with his wife.

cheers,

John B.