Mother’s Thimble

This story captures life as a child in the 1930’s and may give you a little insight to the saying “A stitch in time, saves nine.” 

Most of the basic life necessities were done by hand and every dollar and every minute counted. From having to haul water from the windmill to the house for weekly baths, washing clothes, washing dishes, and the cooking, to hauling in corn cobs and wood from the woodshed to ‘fire’ the stove, to sewing all our clothes with a foot-treadle sewing machine, to making sure they stayed mended, to making our own ‘lye’ laundry soap . . . For a household of ten with the hired hands, washday was an all-day event that had to be planned around. Our Briggs *semi-automatic clothes washer helped, but the wash tub was filled with water by hand and each piece of clothing fed one-by-one through the ‘wringer’ and then hung on the clothesline outside to dry. Until the oldest children were able to help, it was all up to Mom. She worked tirelessly to make it all work; pinning together patterns right on our bodies with new fabric draped just so, and if we moved a muscle she’d thump us on the head with her thimble, talking around pins in her mouth: “Throw your shoulders back like a little tin soldier, or there’ll be the devil to pay”. All night long we’d hear her feet treadling the sewing machine, picking up speed to have the finery at the deadline.  No one noticed her weariness . . . hugging us, as we sashayed out the door . . . off to church, parlor games, or school the next day.