domestic-life
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A tub what?
This Sunday is Easter. So I was looking for Easter hats for Rose. [As an aside, don’t you wish hats would come back in vogue? All those frilly Easter hats, especially from the 40s, look like so much fun.] Back to the matter at hand… I was looking for Easter hats, perusing the Sears Catalog…
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B is for…
Rose has been feeling a tad sympathetic with all those on the receiving end of this late winter / early spring snowstorm. She knows just how that feels…
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On Death
Pardon me while I get maudlin… Yesterday, I read this in the 1930 diary I have: Had 16 little piglets today, but the old mother laid on 4 and killed them. This made me sad. Especially if you’ve seen the cute piglet pictures I posted here. But it also got me thinking about how common…
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A is for…
One of the tools in a writer’s arsenal to develop a fictional character is the Character A-Z exercise, where, beginning with the letter A and working your way through to Z, you write from the character’s POV (point of view) about whatever topic comes to mind for the letter at hand. Because, there comes a…
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Can’t you smell that smell
Forgive me for the Skynyrd earworm. I have this wonderful reference book, Never Done: A History of American Housework, that I’ve been reading. In the chapter “Fetch a Pail of Water,” the author talks about all the things for which our ancestors had to haul water to accomplish. When I came to the part about…
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Gorgeous George
Rose has a little story to tell us. About Gorgeous George. Get a cup of coffee (or whatever your favorite beverage might be) then sit down and enjoy!
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Snow Cream
This diary entry intrigued me: 1929 Thursday January 10 Nice day. Roads were drifted full again. LAS met here today. Not very large crowd but not so bad for the roads. Took in over $5. Snow started to blow about 4:30 and had another blizzard all night again. The wind blew just terrible. Francis, Ruth,…
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You say tomato…
And Rose says… Pancakes? Or is it Hotcakes? Seriously. I need to know. Rose was cooking Harold breakfast, which is a chore for her, given she’s a pretty bad cook, when she was stopped dead in her tracks by a very indecisive writer. Would Rose say pancakes or hotcakes? Which phrase reads rural Nebraska in 1930? That…
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How to Preserve a Husband
How to Preserve a Husband?! Geez. That sounds like a macabre title for a mystery. It’s not; it’s a recipe. But that sounds equally ghoulish… How did I get here, you ask?
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A Day in the Life
I have this awesome resource: the diary of an Iowa farm wife from 1928-1931. She doesn’t write much in her daily entries; they’re usually less than three sentences, but taken in aggregate over the years they paint a fair picture of life on a farm. Some days are more exciting than others, though, as witnessed…