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How Good Were the Good Old Days?

How Good Were the Good Old Days?

Good Old Days

You know those pictures about the good old days that keep making the rounds on Facebook? The ones about kids playing outside more way back when? Or about how we ate raw cookie dough and didn’t die? How the present generation has been coddled by their parents?

But not us.
No, siree.
Not us.
We’re tough.
Because we grew up in the good old days.
With emphasis on the word good.

But how good were the good old days really? Maybe not as good as we remember. Or as our parents remember. Or their parents, for that matter, as this recipe for wash day shows. Mom found this 1900s washday ‘receipt’ as they used to be called, in the 1970s. She’s taken our grandparents to Illinois on a genealogy trip. The ‘receipt’ was in an old church cookbook from Lenarch, Illinois. Someone was throwing the cookbook away, so Mom tore out the page and brought it home.

My sister found it in 2008 while helping Mom sort through her treasures before selling her house. Recently, she gave me a copy, complete with the original spelling. Which got me to thinking about how good the good old days really were. See what you think:

Grandma’s Washing Receipt

  1. bild a fire in the back yoard to heet kettle of rain water.
  2. set tubs so smoke won’t blo in eyes if wind is pert.
  3. shave one hole cake soap in bilin water.
  4. sort things, make three piles: 1 pile white, 1 pile collord, 1 pile work britches and rags.
  5. stur flour in cold water to sooth then thin down with bilin water.
  6. rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard. Then bile. Rub cullord but don’t bile–just rench and starch.
  7. take white things out of kettle with broom stick handle then rench, blew and starch.
  8. spred tee towels on grass.
  9. hang old rags on fence.
  10. pore rench water in flower bed.
  11. scrub porch with hot soapy water.
  12. turn tubs upside down.
  13. go put on cleen dress–smooth hair with side combs–brew cup of tee–set and rest and rock a spell and count blessings.

I don’t know about you, but that receipt and front loading, water and energy saving push button washing machines make the good new days look mighty good!

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