Excerpts from transcribing about Grandma Webster

I thought everyone might enjoy reading a few examples about mom's past.  Read the cost of rent of all things.  Wow!

I'm really excited about completing this project.  I think the whole family will enjoy it.  Refreshing my memories since I did this over 20 years ago has been a hoot.

You will find grammatical errors because I tried to type it just the way she spoke it, but if there are spelling errors--those are my typos.  lol

1.  MOM:  We found a little bitty old house that had never been…had too much done to it.  It had plasterboard, I believe…  No it didn’t have plasterboard; there was no plaster to it.  It was…just looked like cardboard, but that wasn’t what they called it.  I can’t think what they called it now that was on the inside.  There was no water there.  We had to carry water from--had to pull it up out by the bucket out of a well, and carry water about ½ block up to our house.  Of course, your dad carried most of the water, but we had a lot of fun.  We couldn’t have had more fun if had been millionaires, I think, when we lived there.  We rented the house for $3.00 per month.

2.  Me:  I don’t remember that.  I remember taking baths in a washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor, but don’t guess I remember how the water got—how we got rid of the water once we were done with it.  I don’t remember that.

MOM:  We had to carry it out.  We carried it out the backdoor and daddy had dug a ditch out there along the—out away from the house a ways—dug a ditch down through, that went out down toward the alley.  It usually drained clear out.  The ditch was not very deep.  We had it so it didn’t drain out and kill the garden.  

3.  MOM:  The one thing that I can think of, though, that was comical, the most funniest thing that happened when I was a kid.  I think—I don’t know whether I was—I was old enough to know better.  I don’t know just how old I was—I can’t remember that, but I must have been 8 or 9, probably 8 years old, I would say.  My aunt Em which was my grandmother Walmsley’s sister had baked me a nice, big angel food cake.  If I remember when I was a kid she always baked me an angel food cake for my birthday.  So she had made this big angel food cake for my birthday and had it all decorated up nice.   It was such a pretty thing.  I came home from school and there was nobody home.  I saw this cake I thought, “Hmm, that’s my birthday cake.”  Usually they didn’t have a party for me or anything—I just had birthday cake, you know.  There usually was no big gathering or nothing.  So I said to myself, “That’s my cake.  I guess if I want a piece of that cake, I could have a piece.”  Then I said, “My mother will kill me.  I don’t dare to get in that cake.”  I went off and did something else.  After a while I went back, and I saw that cake.  “Well, that is my birthday cake and Aunt Em made that for me.  I know she did, so I’m going to have a piece of that birthday cake.  Mom is going to whip me, but I don’t care.  I’m going to eat a piece of that cake.”  So I did.  Lo and behold, that time Aunt Em, I think—if I remember right, Aunt Em and Uncle Fritz came in with Dorothy, their daughter, and were going to eat supper with us that night.  We were going to have ice cream and cake.  I had already been in the cake.  My mother did pert near kill me for that.  (laughter from both mom and I)  “Boy that was good!” (meaning the cake)

Me:  I suppose that was at an age before there were mixes.

MOM:  Oh, yeah.  Homemade, made from scratch.  They didn’t even know what a cake mix was in them days.

4.   Anyway, I would bake bread on that kerosene stove with the oven that you sat over the burners.  I had one that sat over just one burner and then I had one that sat over two burners.  The two burner was the one I used when I baked bread because I always baked at least 2 loaves of bread and usually three. 

 

Daddy always liked homemade bread and we could clean it up pretty quick too.  I would bake bread even on the hottest day in the summer.  I would be baking because it pleased your dad.  Uncle Roy and Grandma came down one day and it must have been 90 degrees at least—maybe more than that outside—and I suspect it was hotter than that in the kitchen because I was baking bread in there.  Uncle Roy said, “Good God what do you mean by baking bread on a day like this?”  And I said, “No matter how hot it gets, my husband still likes homemade bread, so I make the bread.”  (laughter)  Which I did, and I enjoyed it.  I could bake rolls and bread, either one; and then I use to make coffee cakes—tea rings—got to making tea rings and got to giving them for Christmas presents once in a while.  Boy, everybody just raved about them.  And I gave loaves of bread sometimes too.

[insert by me]  I remember those tea rings—the house always smelled so good and those tea rings tasted so yummy.  This is one of my favorite memories from my childhood.