Some of the farm mothers during the Depression era were able to feed their families well. They had nothing but food. They had their own chickens and saved their vegetable seeds from year to year and planted huge gardens. They started pots and containers of every kind with seedlings in the winter for spring gardens. The city mothers didnt fare nearly as well. I have seen cartoons in old books of fat naked farmers. Well, naked for then -- they had their pants on. But the point the cartoonist was trying to make was that the farmers and their families had plenty of food but nothing else.
Husband and his sons would hunt and fish and bring home the meat for supper. Mama would sell eggs to pay for material and sewing items. The cream from milking "Bossy" wasn't used for the family meals, as it was sold in town, or exchanged at the grocery store for coffee and some tobacco for Papa ... or just cash to buy postage stamps or a gallon of gas for the car. And, ya know one thing, those women didn't go out to work?
And Mama made sure, above all, that she had coffee for her husband and tobacco for his pipe or for hand rolled cigarettes. I mean, Mama kept her husband happy. And the women that didn't keep their husbands happy back then paid in the long run. I have read so many stories about men who couldn't feed their families and they would kill themselves. A man that couldn't feed his family was not even a man, back then, and he figured he may as well kill himself and be one less mouth to feed. Or many men went out on the road to find work and never returned.
The mother's job at home was precious and she was needed to sing to the family and to dry their tears. She was the star of the home and the strong shoulder to cry on. She was a woman of faith and courage. And if she wasn't, she just flat lost her family.
And, ya know, during the Dirty Thirties in Kansas, they had no rain for three years. And so they had no gardens and mother kept her family alive on dried beans. Mainly, she kept them alive with her faith. Also, there were several plagues of grasshoppers during that time, too. The grasshoppers came and ate everything off the top of the ground ... even ate the eyes out of several horses. They would eat the wooden handles off the garden tools.
The land in Kansas was so overworked by the settlers and they had so few trees, when the wind came, it would blow the dry top soil right off. So the Dust Storms were terrible in that three years of no rain. The Mothers' homes were just full of dry dirt. They would have to shovel the dirt out of their homes in the country. In order to start supper, they had to first clean the dishes full of dirt.
Mother was the anchor of the home as she kept the faith and encourged the family to keep on goin'. And now, dear mothers, in our age, you all have a job to do to keep your families happy and well fed and full of courage. We need to keep the hope up in our families. We need to have homes that are festive and alive with joy. We, too, fight a war, as the times about us are hard.
Ya know, we need to take lessons from the Mothers of old. We need to cook and bake every day, too. Mothers used to make pies and cakes once a week ... also, a few batches of bread, deprending on family size. We seem to be losing our families, and factories are feeding our loved ones. We need to fill up our cookie jars with homemade cookies and bring the joy and gladness back into our homes.
I have had so many interruptions on this writing today. I have been workin' on it since early this morning. I am just going to have to quit it and write again about it later.
