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Show One Day in the Life of a Housewife ... 1851 Style By Mary Gae Evans I really enjoyed myself this morning. I got to sleep in until 5:30 a. m., Then finally the noises of all the hustle and bustle outside my window woke me up. I could hear the cow mooing, the milk bucket rattling, and the rooster announcing sunrise. I dressed hurridly and could hear the children -ages one, two, three, four and five - jumping up and down on the straw mattress on the beds. I felt a little guilty for having slept in too long. I sped outside to bring an armload of wood and built the fire in the big black kitchen stove. Then out to the hen house to look for some eggs for breakfast -only two eggs so now I have to make pancakes in the skillit that sticks. Meantime the fire went out so I cut more chips to start it again. Now the kids are running around in bare feet ignoring me as I tell them for the tenth time -PLEASE GET DRESSED!! Pa brings in the milk and I have to take time out to strain it. He is mumbling something about "why haven't you fed your chicken's and "where are my poached eggs." The fire is fading again but I finish the pancakes and clean up the sticky spilled cereal. Then I carry in enough water from the well to heat on the stove for dishes. Today is laundry day and soap making day, so I carry in bucket after bucket until I fill the tub and start the fire outside for the soap to cook on. The kids want to play in the water, run sticks up and down the washboard and then run outside to play in the fire with the same sticks. The baby keeps running through the hole in the corral fence and Pa is coming up the road on the horse and will be ready for lunch. I . dash inside to stoak up the fire and the two year old falls down in a juicy part of the corral. Good grief I just remembered I forgot to mix bread this morning so I have only one slice for lunch. I just hope I've saved t enough cream to churn the butter. This afternoon I've got to do the ironing; (If I can keep the fire hot enough to heat the iron). Then bake pies, and the bread (after I grind the wheat). Then get in more wood, finish the soap, make the beds, heat enough water to bathe all the kids in the No. 3 tub and finish hand sewing a petticoat and a shirt and I'm just too tired to write longer. Besides the kids have developed runny noses. Boy f sure" do' wish some one . would invent penicillin. I couldn't think of any thing to write so I found this column written by my great grandmother in the early days in Parowan. Well anyway she would have written it if she had just had time. Parowan is celebrating the anniversary of the Pioneers arrival here in 1851, and I just wanted to remind myself how lucky I am to have all those nice electric things that run by pushing buttons and a supermarket that gives milk instead 61 a cow who always gets dirty in all the wrong places. . I would, however, like to have some of that homemade bread and butter and maybe just a small slice : of the pie. |