{"id":9829,"date":"2014-08-01T08:53:35","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T15:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=9829"},"modified":"2014-08-01T08:53:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T15:53:35","slug":"moms-story-bibs-teeth-coats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2014\/08\/01\/moms-story-bibs-teeth-coats\/","title":{"rendered":"Mom’s Story: Bibs, Teeth, Coats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Details continue of Mom’s reminiscences. She’d always said her parents were poor, but since I didn’t grow up this way, I never realized how poor. (And neither did she at the time\u00a0. . . would\u00a0even say later that it stood her in good stead.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Betty-Moore-and-bike-650\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The photo is from a slightly later date, and more prosperous time, by then married, and with a bike! (BTW, that bike stayed in the family until Dad was in his 90’s.)<\/h6>\n

We never heard of napkins, either cloth or paper.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

When one of us kids would get a messy face or hands while eating,\u00a0my mother would get up from the table to get a dishtowel, which she would wet a corner of and use to wipe face and hands. And sometimes Dad would use\u00a0a dishtowel (“tea towel”) as a bib.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But of course that would make more washing for my mother.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of a washday her knuckles would be bleeding from all the scrubbing of clothes on the board.\u00a0I was as glad as she was when she finally got\u00a0a washing machine.\u00a0It isn’t any wonder that women of that generation became old and worn-out, often toothless, from too hard work and much child-bearing, before they were 40.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Both my parents got false teeth before that age. People then just went to the dentist to have a tooth pulled!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I never went to the dentist until I was 18. And that was because I moved to the big city of Denver for the summer and had a job as a live in housemaid.\u00a0I got room and board and three dollars a week.\u00a0The woman I worked for helped me find a dentist and\u00a0I took the bus downtown to see him.\u00a0He found nine cavities!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know what his regular price was but when he learned how much I made he charged me only\u00a0one dollar per filling.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of the money I made that summer\u00a0I used to put a winter coat on layaway.\u00a0I think it cost $15.\u00a0When I decided to go back home to live and graduate, I didn’t have enough time to work to pay off the coat. Instead I had to\u00a0buy a bus ticket from Denver to Yuma, where my parents had moved.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I think I expected they would pay off the coat for me but they didn’t have the money. A new friend of my mother’s did it for me just in time for cold\u00a0<\/em><\/span>weather.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I doubt if anyone will believe these stories but they are all true.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Times were basic, but they got by (with a little help from their friends). And here’s a great photo from slightly more prosperous times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9829"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9845,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829\/revisions\/9845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}