Writing inspired by the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest.

“Food will win the war” – Women & WWI

June 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

WW1 - Be Patriotic - PosterMy novel set during WWI has had me digging into how the war affected Americans in their everyday lives. A popular women’s magazine of the era, Ladies Home Journal showed that even before the United States entered the war in 1917, Americans were feeling the impact.

Articles in the February 1915 Ladies Home Journal described “fundamental lessons coming out of the war.” Among them:

  • Every American was being taught economy
  • Women were urged to look for products “Made in the United States of America” and to “Buy American”
  • People were urged to “think of the other person”
  • Readers were advised of the need for humility and interdependence
  • The magazine suggested that, “we’ve wrongly fostered a war spirit in children” (by giving children war toys for Christmas)

All of those actions were voluntary. In 1917, after the U.S. entered the war, what had been left to volunteer compliance became the purview of the government. Congress passed the Food and Fuel Control Act, also known as the Lever Act, and President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order creating the U.S. Food Administration.

Herbert Hoover, former head of the Belgian Relief Organization won the job of Food Administration administrator. He accepted no salary, arguing that taking no pay would give him the moral authority to ask the American people to sacrifice in support of the war effort.

With the authority of President Wilson, Hoover became a “food dictator,” regulating the distribution, export, import, purchase, and storage of food. “Food will win the war,” Hoover proclaimed.

WWI - Food Will Win The War - Poster Hoover reached out to American women in August 1917 with a full-page article in Ladies Home Journal titled, “What I would like Women to do.” Here are some of the ways Hoover urged women to conserve:

  • Don’t throw food away
  • Order small meals
  • Have nutritional balance
  • Stop catering to different appetites
  • No second helpings. No 4 o’clock teas. No party refreshments. No eating after the theatre.
  • One meatless day a week, one wheatless meal a day, no young meat, no butter in cookies
  • Sign a statement of support

Food conservation continued to be a focus of the war on the home front. Another article provided women with these helpful tips:

  • Put two Fridays in every week
  • Use butter substitutes – beef & mutton fat, lard, sausage drippings
  • Eat meals from the garden. Preserve produce by pickling and canning
  • Use things you might have thrown away, e.g. make peapod soup, use outside lettuce leaves and scallion tops for salad, use crushed eggshells to clarify clear soup.

WWI - Eat More Corn - PosterWheat was an important export to Europe, so American housewives were urged to try new dishes using “war flours.” A few recipe ideas:

  • Corn meal and raisin gems
  • Bran drops
  • Golden corn tea rolls
  • Graham nut bread for sandwiches
  • Potato biscuits
  • Corn muffin dessert with spiced apples
  • Corn crullers
  • Graham and rye cookies
  • Steamed corn meal apple pudding
  • Corn and rice muffins
  • Pumpkin biscuits
  • Rice waffles
  • Use one cup of oatmeal in place of one cup of wheat flour in a griddlecake recipe.

In reading these lists, I was struck by how many of them my mother did as a matter of routine on the farm in the 1950s & 60s – cooking with bacon grease and lard, using cornmeal, pumpkin, and oatmeal in recipes. Gardening, preserving, using everything. Occasionally we observed meatless Fridays in deference to our Catholic hired men, but we had broader meat options than city dwellers. The squirrels and rabbits Dad shot were tasty.

I don’t know if those practices held over from the wars or if farm living simply lends itself to them. In any case, women answered Hoover’s call and went to their kitchens to help win the war.

Filed Under: Farm life, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What is the value of a letter?

June 10, 2013 By 14 Comments

When I was a kid growing up on the farm in the 1950s, I waited everyday for the mailman to stop at our mailbox. It wasn’t as though anyone was going to write to me, but any letter we received was exciting. Before email, Skype, texts, when telephones were used mainly for emergencies, letters were the common form of communication. Letters recorded the everyday; letters recorded the extraordinary. 

For writers, letters are a treasure trove. Where would David McCullough be without the letters John and Abigail Adams wrote to each other? All of the letters telling of their love for each other, their concerns about their children and the farm, their interest in affairs of state. 

Canada Ltr1

Letter from Wm. J. Johnston to Carl Jensen, Esq. Jan. 13, 1910

My maternal grandmother and grandfather were the inspiration for my upcoming novel set in pre-WWI Iowa. Because my grandfather died in 1918 and my grandmother never talked about him, the story I’ve created is fiction. In creating their world 100 years ago, I drew from many sources, among them a handful of letters my grandfather saved.

Canada Ltr2

$300 for three horses – 1910

Before he married my grandmother, Carl Jensen homesteaded in Canada. That didn’t work out for reasons we don’t know and he returned to Iowa. The letter I’ve included here is from one of his neighbors. As short as this letter is, it provided a wealth of information to inspire my writing.

Canada Ltr3

He would “Make a dicker” on farm equipment.

Among other things, I learned how people addressed each other, how they abbreviated names, the price of horses, what kinds of equipment they used.

Canada Ltr4

“… I will come in and get you and you can come out and batch for a while again.”

I learned that terms could be agreed to in a letter and both parties could be comfortable with that. I learned that the mailman didn’t come to every Canadian farm – Mr. Johnson was sending his letter into town to be posted by a neighbor who was going to make the trip to town.

On a personal level, the fact that my grandfather saved these letters said something powerful to me about the loneliness of farming on the Canadian prairie. Only a handful of letters from that era survive, but I treasure each of them.

I regret that we don’t write letters so often anymore. I wonder what writers of the future will use for their research? From time to time, I print out significant emails, but the fact that I print those and discard the others that deal with the mundane also says something.

What about you? Are you still writing letters? Do you save any that you receive? Writers – Have you used letters as research for your writing?

Filed Under: Farm life, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

History wrapped in a gripping story – Author David Lawlor

May 2, 2013 By 1 Comment

THE GOLDEN GRAVE - David LawlorI’m pleased to welcome Irish author David Lawlor to my blog today. For anyone with an interest in historical fiction, WWI, and action/adventure stories, this will be a treat.  Lawlor’s just-released novel THE GOLDEN GRAVE continues the story of Liam Mannion, an Irishman who fought valiantly in WWI but now is trying to outrun his past. Mannion finds himself back in France with his war buddies reviving the horrors of trench warfare as they pursue a treasure buried during the war.

Though THE GOLDEN GRAVE can be read as a stand-alone story, you’ll be missing a bet if you don’t go back and pick up TAN, too.

Welcome, David!
Thanks, Carol

What’s the most interesting thing to you about writing historical fiction?
I’m intrigued by those times when people were really tested and wonder how I would have fared. Questions like that inspire my writing and my delving into the past. With my first book, TAN, I delved into the world of the frontline soldier and also into the textile industry of Manchester. These things intrigued me.

What kinds of research did you do to ground yourself in the WWI era?
Some of the technical research was tedious. I nearly went mad trying to understand and describe the workings of a textile mill, but I felt it was worth it to give a sense of what my main character, Liam, was going through.

With TAN’s sequel, THE GOLDEN GRAVE, I found the research easier. I had already got a feel for the times – the clothes, the songs, etc., in the first book. I studied photographs and more accounts of trench life. I also researched tunneling techniques and bunker making.

One thing that drove me nuts was trying to figure out how long it would take to pump a water-filled bunker clear using 1920s equipment. Eventually, I contacted the Imperial War Museum and they gave me an approximate answer. It was little questions like those that held me up, not the bigger ones like how the battlefield looked. The other useful tool I had was a documentary about a WWI bunker. It was this documentary that inspired the story.

The research you did really made the time, place and experiences in your books incredibly real. In TAN, you wrote about the burning of Balbriggan, an historical fact. Where does fact end and fiction begin with your writing?
This historic event is the skeleton upon which I interweave my story. For TAN, I studied photos of Balbriggan and walked its streets, talking to locals. One of their anecdotes about the Tans actually made it into the book. The rest of TAN was fairly loose. Sometimes you can get too caught up in the historic detail to the detriment of the story.

You’ve struck the right balance between historical accuracy and characters with a good story, David. How do you go about creating your characters? Are they based on people you know? Is Liam autobiographical?
I suppose I would like to think there is some of me in Liam. The femme fatale, Sabine, was based on a woman I know, (the less said about that the better ;) ) Ben Sweetman came easily – he’s a gentle giant, like the Death Row character in The Green Mile.

I’m impressed with your portrayal of female characters. What informed how you write about women – in general – and with regard to the war?
I approach female characters the same way as male ones. I wonder how I’d react in their situations. Sabine had to be clever and manipulative to survive and successfully run a bar catering to aggressive, battle-scarred soldiers, so I tried to show that side of her. Equally, I felt Kate, from TAN, was bound to be smart and feisty, given that her father was a successful businessman and she was living through the whole suffragette movement. Women had played an important part during the 1916 Easter Rising. I felt it was natural that their role would have impacted on Kate.

The women are right in the action, that’s for sure. Pacing is a strength in your writing. The story grabs readers and doesn’t let go. What advice do you have for writers (like me) who’d like to improve pacing?
I don’t think I can give much advice to anyone, but I try to see the story as you would a film. I leave little cliff-hangers at the end of sections and I like to flip between scenes quite quickly. I think that can be used to inject pace or to slow things down when events get too frenetic.

When you have a story idea, how do you go about building the story?
I build a clear plot before writing but leave enough room for the characters to take me on tangents. In a new book I’m working on I have one character whose basic role is clear but who I know will be intriguing; how exactly that will be revealed, I’m unsure.

David LawlorI’ll be waiting, David. I’m a fan! I could go on asking questions, but we both need to get back to writing. Thanks for joining us today.

If you’d like more info about David’s take on history, he celebrates the bit players of history on his blog: History With A Twist http://historywithatwist.wordpress.com/

And here are more ways to find him and his books.
Tan (US site) http://goo.gl/HMUKS
Tan (UK site) http://goo.gl/nK1li
The Golden Grave (US site) http://goo.gl/MwZtJ
The Golden Grave (UK site) http://goo.gl/XcMuv

Twitter: @LawlorDavid

On Goodreads:
The Golden Grave http://goo.gl/89pJZ
Tan http://goo.gl/2fb87

Filed Under: Book Reviews, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The value of a fresh look at writing? Priceless

April 8, 2013 By 19 Comments
Bryce Canyon, Utah - Arch

Bryce Canyon, Utah

A fresh read of a manuscript points out all kinds of problems: flat characters, scenes that though beautifully written go nowhere, leaps in logic that were clear to me in the writing but not to a reader. A fresh location can also inspire a fresh look.

A few weeks ago, I met my writing partner Mary Gottschalk in Moab, Utah, for what has become an annual tradition – a week devoted to our writing. 

I’ve written about retreats before, but I was particularly excited about this one. Having given the full manuscript for my work in progress, All She Ever Wanted, to Mary for a complete, start-to-finish read, my goal for the week was to fill in the holes and trim the fat she saw on this read through. She didn’t disappoint. Her critique offered both big picture and fine-tuning feedback.

Reading with clear eyes, she found sections that could be eliminated entirely or reduced to a line or two of backstory. With her comments in hand, I set about hacking entire scenes. Once I embraced the idea of eliminating anything that didn’t move the plot forward in a meaningful way, I found other scenes that were surprisingly easy to send to the cutting room floor.

But it wasn’t all about cutting. In the course of the week, a character who started off as a minor player at a holiday party took on a major role. By the end of the week, Harley was challenging my heroine Liddie to grow up, speak up, and face the reality of how quickly gossip can travel. To accommodate this troublemaker, I wrote new scenes and changed the tone of others.

In addition, I fleshed out the historical setting, adding richness of detail to the story skeleton, based on research I’d been doing. The war in Europe (WWI) had a broader impact on the U.S. than I’d realized it did, years before the U.S. sent troops into battle in 1917. Every American was being taught economy. Women were called to eschew foreign labels in their clothes and buy American. Clothing designs took on military influences.

At the beginning of the week, I hoped to be able to respond to Mary’s comments on the first half of my manuscript. What an adrenaline rush to find that I could tackle the entire manuscript. By the time we were driving back home, I could visualize having my manuscript ready to put in the hands of beta readers by the end of April.

A fresh look and a week with focus let me take some very big steps in that direction.

Filed Under: History, Travel, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Even fantasy has to be historically accurate – Guest Post – Annamaria Bazzi

March 31, 2013 By 5 Comments

WhiteSwansARegencyEra for blogsI want to thank Carol for hosting the tenth stop on my blog tour for the young adult fantasy short story series White Swans: A Regency Era. It’s great to be here, Carol. It’s been quite a different experience scheduling my own blog tour, and not always as fun as doing the research and writing for my book!

The research I did for the first short story of the White Swans series was both interesting and fun. Historical facts are important no matter what genre an author writes, but especially writing for young adults, since teens are impressionable and tend to believe everything they read. Even the accuracy of the details of clothing, which might seem trivial, is essential.

The Regency Era has intrigued me since I was a child, but even more so after reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. For many of my facts, I turned to the Jane Austen websites, which are full of wonderful historic details.

One of the more challenging items I researched was how to address people. I had been under the impression that I could refer to a duke as ‘My Lord.’ Boy was I wrong! To do so is quite degrading. A duke is addressed as ‘Your Grace’, and he’s introduced as, for example, ‘Charles Emory, the Duke of Deverow.’ Yes, he is one of the leading characters in my book.

What about the funny little hat maids wore that looked like a shower cap? Well, that’s called a mob hat, and no, it has nothing to do with mobsters and gangsters. It was an essential part of a maid’s uniform.

Speaking of servants, I had to understand what a footman does versus a butler. A footman did a variety of indoor and outdoor jobs. Important to me were the indoor jobs. Learning that a footman laid out the table, served the meal and tea, and assisted the butler helped me determine what Wordsworth’s duties had to be in the book.

During this research, I learned that the butler was responsible for household security and most important, the wine cellar. The butler didn’t wear a uniform, but he wore a black cravat instead of a white one so he would not be mistaken for a gentleman.

I also needed to know the difference between a chambermaid, parlor maid, a personal maid, and a lady in waiting. The housekeeper supervised all the maids including the cook, ordered food and supplies, and took care of the household accounts. She pretty much ran the house. I chose not to give my character Lady Kendíka a lady in waiting. Instead, I gave her a companion, whose duties I describe in the second book.

Another very important servant was the personal maid or “abigail.” A personal maid took care of all the lady’s needs. In White Swans, Cordova is Lady Kendíka’s abigail, Cordova dresses and undresses Lady Kendíka, helps with her hair and also mends and takes care of all her dresses.

Finding out about men’s wear was interesting. I always wondered about the cravat, also called a neckcloth. Worn with high-collared shirts, a cravat is a long, narrow strip of linen or silk wrapped around the neck several times and tied in the front.

Behavior and manners are also important. My character Charles has exemplary manners. While his etiquette is excellent, Kendíka, who is new to the world and comes from the 21st century, has much to learn.

It is my firm belief an author should use the facts of history correctly to leave the proper impressions with the reader, especially when dealing with impressionable teens.

White Swans: A Regency Era

Left an orphan, Kendíka cries herself to sleep and startles awake in a Regency castle. Terror consumes her, and she attempts to escape only to discover the new world is her prison. Having no choice, she attends a ball given by her guardian, Lord Deverow, to introduce her into society. He admonishes her to follow the rules and promises to protect her from the wrath of the strange, hazy set of eyes spying on everything. But when she ignores his warning, Kendíka learns firsthand what it means to be disobedient.

Annamaria Bazzi

Although born in the United States, Annamaria Bazzi spent a great deal of her childhood in Sicily, Italy, in a town called Sciacca. Italian was the language spoken at home. Therefore, she had no problems when she found herself growing up in a strange country. Upon returning to the states, she promised herself she would speak without an accent.

She attended Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Computers with a minor in Spanish.

Annamaria spent twenty years programming systems for large corporations, creating innovative solution, and addressing customer problems. During those years, she raised four daughters and one husband. Annamaria lives in Richmond Virginia with her small family where she now dedicates a good part of her day writing.

You can visit Annamaria at:
Blog
Facebook

email: annamariascorner@yahoo.com
Twitter

Links to Annamaria’s books
White Swans: A Regency Era — Amazon
A Simple Matter of Justice — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords
Revelation of Abaddon — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords 

Filed Under: History, Marketing, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

A memoir told in geology

March 18, 2013 By 12 Comments
Bryce Canyon, Utah, Hoodoos

Bryce Canyon, Utah, Hoodoos

A drive through the southwest United States invariably inspires my interest in geology. The seismic power of uplifts reveals sheer walls of stone. The layers of red, white, green rock tell of eons of floods, the arrival of shell fish, the retreat of water. The progress of the earth’s development is stripped bare and we see both pain and beauty in this brilliant and honest memoir.

In the past few days, I’ve visited the canyons of southern Utah, where wind and water have created some of the most amazing land formations one is likely to see on earth. Even the pictures I’d seen hadn’t prepared me for the Hoodoos of Bryce Canyon.

Hoodoos are columns of weathered rock shaped by the wind and rain over thousands of years. Layers of softer and harder sedimentary rock cause the erosion to shape the spires into infinitely varied shapes limited only by your imagination. You might see Abraham Lincoln, Medieval castles, Cleopatra on her throne, or Casper the Friendly Ghost. An overlook called Inspiration Point provided a view of thousands of hoodoos in tight formation reminding me of the soldiers in the famous Terracotta Army in China.

The alluvial fan on the left is beginning to birth new hoodoos.

The alluvial fan on the left is beginning to birth new hoodoos.

A park ranger shared pictures of some of the hoodoos taken 60 years ago and pictures of those same hoodoos taken in the past year. Erosion has taken its toll. Eventually the spires will be too weak to support themselves and they’ll crumple to dust. The erosion is steady and significant. The rim of the canyon erodes at the rate of 1 to 4 feet each 100 years.

This made me a little sad, as reading memoirs sometimes does. What would be here for future generations, I wondered.  The ranger offered hope. As the erosion continues, new hoodoos emerge out of the alluvial fans.  If you look closely at the left side of the picture, you can see it happening. Today’s hoodoo soldiers will fade away to be replaced by the new recruits of the future.

Filed Under: History, Travel, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Profiles in teenage courage

March 10, 2013 By 4 Comments
"Harriet Tubman" by Jane DeDecker

“Harriet Tubman” by Jane DeDecker

Could I have been so brave? That’s the question I found myself asking yesterday as my travels took me to the Clinton Presidential Library, to sculptures like this one of Civil War abolitionist Harriet Tubman along the Little Rock riverfront, and finally to Little Rock Central High School.

In 1957, nine black teenagers, dubbed “The Little Rock Nine,” stood up – stood against – segregation to attend previously all-white Little Rock Central High School. The naivete they operated under on the first day they showed up for classes was soon erased as the angry crowds that met them each morning became increasingly hostile and the National Guard troops present in the first days were replaced by ill-prepared and frightened city police.

Yet they continued to brave the gauntlet, never faltering, never letting anyone see them cry. They feared for their lives and yet they continued to show up. Only when President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Army with bayonets fixed did those teenagers begin to feel safe again. And even then, their fight was far from over.

The Old Testament of the Bible includes the book of “Esther,” which is the story of a Jewish girl who becomes queen to a powerful king. While she is queen, the king is convinced to give the order to kill all the Jews. Esther’s uncle tells her she must go to the king and convince him not to carry out the order. But Esther fears for her life. If she goes to the king when he hasn’t called her, she could be killed. (Harsh, yes, but that was the law.)

Esther’s uncle says to her: “if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14 New International Version)

The bravery of these black teenagers in 1957 astounds me. Times were such that if they had chosen not to walk the gauntlet in Little Rock, it is likely that someone else would have eventually done it – just as Esther’s uncle advised her. But also like Esther, the Little Rock Nine were there at a time and a place in our history when they could step up and make a difference. They looked hatred in the face, and they kept moving forward.

Children if you are tired, keep going.
If you’re hungry, keep going.
If you’re scared, keep going.
If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.
— Harriet Tubman

 

Filed Under: History, Travel, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

Do the facts matter?

March 1, 2013 By 25 Comments

The discussion swirling around the propensity of this year’s Oscar-nominated Best Pictures to have taken liberties with the facts has me asking: Do the facts matter? and  How much do the facts matter?

Daniel Day-Lewis as president Abraham Lincoln in "Lincoln." - 2012 Walt Disney Pictures

Daniel Day-Lewis as president Abraham Lincoln in “Lincoln.” – 2012 Walt Disney Pictures

In Oscar Best Picture winner Argo, the role of Canadians in a positive outcome of the Iranian hostage crisis was underplayed and distorted, intentionally for dramatic effect.

In Lincoln, the representatives from Connecticut were portrayed as against the 13th Amendment when they actually supported it. In an otherwise remarkably accurate portrayal of events, this bit of straying from the details bothers me.

It’s fiction. I get that. But as I write my own novel, historical fiction set during WWI, I have been diligent in trying to be historically accurate. The clothes they wore. The houses they lived in. The topics they’d have discussed. I’ve been particularly mindful of being accurate with any details about the real people of the time.

I am guided by something a speaker said about including real people in a work of fiction. The question was: Can you include a real person in a story when you don’t know for a fact that the real person would have been there or done that? 

This speaker said, Yes. As long as what you have the person do does not conflict with anything commonly known. So, for instance, if you want to write the person into your scene speaking at a conference in Nevada on a day when the person was commonly known to be vacationing in Europe with her children, that’s a no.

It’s unwise, but my guess is that many people today get their view of history from movies and novels. As writers, it seems that we bear some responsibility to be accurate when we can. Even in fiction.

As a reader, part of what I look for in good historical fiction is an accurate portrayal of the place and time and people. I know that doesn’t always make for the best drama. Ben Affleck decided downplaying the Canadians in Argo made for better drama.  He distorted the facts. But the logic behind Steven Spielberg‘s choice to portray the representatives from Connecticut as against the 13th Amendment when the opposite was true – and commonly known – feels like it crossed an unnecessary line.

What do you think? Do the facts matter to you as a reader or viewer? Do the facts matter to you as a writer? How much do they matter? Where do you draw the line?

Filed Under: History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Completing a century of quilting

February 18, 2013 By 16 Comments
Lap quilting Grandma's Garden

Lap quilting Grandma’s Garden

In December I began hand quilting a Grandma’s Garden quilt my grandmother began to assemble about a century ago. This month I finished the task. Throughout, I was literally wrapped in history as I held the quilt on my lap and took each stitch. 

The flowers that comprise this quilt spent nearly 90 years in my maternal grandmother Mary Elizabeth Haylock Jensen’s trunk. After my grandfather died of the Spanish flu in 1918, Grandma packed many mementos of her family and childhood into a large trunk that moved with her from place to place as she worked to provide for herself and her two daughters. She never remarried.

Eventually the trunk found a home on the farm I grew up on in Jackson County, Iowa. Grandma Jensen lived with us during the summers and with her other daughter (my aunt Joyce) during the school months. After my grandmother died, when my parents retired from the farm to live in Preston, Iowa, they brought the trunk with them, moving it lock, stock, and still unopened into the basement of their home in town. My mother—Ruby Belle Jensen Denter—probably knew what was in her mother’s trunk, but she never dealt with the contents until after my father died in 1999.

Then she opened the trunk and out came a treasure of old quilt pieces, enough to assemble a dozen quilts of different designs. The products of not only my grandmother’s work before she married in 1914, but also of her mother’s work. We have reason to believe that at least two of them-a crazy quilt so fragile pieces of taffeta and silk literally crumble to the touch and a pineapple quilt-were made by my great-grandmother Lydia Belle Luckey Haylock sometime between 1875 and 1910.

Grandma's Garden quilt detail

Grandma’s Garden quilt detail

At the time my mother retrieved the quilts from Grandma’s trunk, her eyesight was failing from macular degeneration. She wanted the quilts completed and she turned to me, though I have little quilting experience.  I turned to my sister in law Anita Gogerty, an accomplished quilter. Anita consented to put the quilt pieces together if I would do the quilting.

The projects required a varying degree of work. The Grandma’s Garden, with its hundreds of hexagons required more effort than any other. It was one I actually never imagined would be finished.  Anita took me totally by surprise when she brought it to me after Thanksgiving last year. 

Almost every night, I sat working on the quilt, thinking about the colors, marveling at the hand stitching, imagining my grandmother’s life. Every night I worked on the quit, my appreciation grew for the vintage fabrics, for what having such a treasure meant to our family and our history. I felt a tremendous responsibility to my grandmother, to my mother, and to the quilts. And I felt honored to contribute to the history of these quilts.

I am pleased that some of my ancestors’ quilt story is finally outside the trunk for others to enjoy.

Grandmas Garden Quilt Genealogy
Carol Ann Denter Bodensteiner (1948 – ) & Anita Gogerty
Ruby Belle Jensen Denter (1916-2008)
Mary Elizabeth Haylock Jensen (1891-1972)
Lydia Belle Luckey Haylock (1857-1916)

Filed Under: Farm life, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

An homage to the iron

February 11, 2013 By 22 Comments
images

Monopoly iron – No longer relevant? Image from Voxxi.com

Monopoly players have said good-bye to the iron, welcoming a cat as the new player piece. As kids growing up in the 1950s, my sisters and I played Monopoly often, and I have to admit, I don’t think any of us ever chose the iron. My personal favorite was the shoe. Still, the iron performed a central role in our lives. Washing on Monday. Ironing on Tuesday. I learned to iron, as many girls did, bringing wrinkle-free order to stacks of handkerchiefs.

Ironing was so integral to the week that I devoted a chapter to it in my memoir Growing Up Country. Since publishing this memoir, I’ve learned that laundry and ironing hold almost as many memories for rural women as taking care of chickens. And that’s saying something.

Though I still have an iron, I use it as little as possible. But I can be as nostalgic as the next person about losing Monopoly’s good old iron. So as we bid the iron adieu, here’s an excerpt from my memoir, from the chapter – “Laundry Lessons.”

* * *

4-H Ironing Demonstration

When Grandma Jensen came to stay with us, which she did every summer, she took over ironing chores. She ironed hankies, too, but not her own. Each night she washed her own hanky in the bathroom sink and plastered it on the screen of the bedroom window to dry.

In the morning, Grandma donned one of the cotton shirtwaist dresses she wore every day. She pulled on nylons, rolling them down to just above her knees, and covered her pure white hair with a silver net. Finally, she plucked the now-dry hanky from the window screen, folded it and put in in her pocket.

When Jane and I took on the 4-H shirt ironing demonstration – and for one summer claimed squatter’s rights at the ironing board – I can only imagine what Grandma thought.

As tedious as the hours of ironing could be, they were also the hours when Grandma watched ‘her shows’ as Mom always called the soaps.

A dedicated follower of the perpetual heartaches and never-ending trials of Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light and As The World Turns, Grandma set the ironing board up in front of the TV in the living room and tackled the ironing while she caught up on the day’s stories. Piece by piece, she drew shirts and pillowcases and hankies and dresses from the laundry basket, stretched them on the ironing board, flicked water with her fingertips and eliminated wrinkles in our clothes while the characters in her dramas solved the problems in their lives.

Every week the basket of ironing was full again with the same laundry; every week the soaps offered the same problems to be solved. Because of Grandma, the hopelessness of soap operas and the never-ending challenge of laundry are tied together forever in my mind.

 * * *

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