Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 8 2
didn't have the detergent like they have now, bleach, and everything.
They had a big old copper boiler. There're antiques now, sold high, and
the women would boil the water and put the sheets and pillow cases in
that washtub right next to it. Then take a long stick and hold that up
and then they'd switch it over into the tub and. . . .
Q: That must have been an all day process?
A: It was an all day process and then pretty near everyone had a summer
kitchen they called them. They had clotheslines in there and they hung
their clothes up in there. We had a little laundry stove and we built a
fire in that to keep it warm in there and the heat would dry them. It
was nothing to go by a house where there was clothes hanging on the
clothesline and a pair of long-johns hanging there that looked like a man
hanging by his hands. The wind would blow them and they were froze
stiff. Well, we just had to do it, that was the way of life.
Q: On the very coldest winter days, how did you manage to stay warm?
A: Oh. . . .
Q: You couldn't have a stove in every room?
A: No, but we had at least two. One in the living room and one in the
kitchen, had a big cook stove in the kitchen and the heating stove. My
father bought what they called a hard coal burner. Had to get the coal
from Pennsylvania, I think.
Q: Why did you have to get coal from Pennsylvania?
A: It was what they called hard coal and there was no ashes to it. When
it got burned there was just a white ash. There was glass all around it
and it would just light up the whole room and you were society when you
got a hard coal burner.
Q: We're going back to some of those things now, did you know that?
A: The hard coal burners? I don't know.
Q: The wood burning stoves?
A: Oh yes. Well, they've got some kind of a way now that they can but I
don't know of anybody around here that--a few put in fireplaces but not
very many put in the other.
Q: Did you burn the front side of your body and freeze the back side on
these stoves?
A: I can tell you about a real case of that. My youngest brother, Paul,
when we lived up in the west part of town and we had to walk to and from
school and I told you before Bressler wouldn't let us bring our dinner.
Said there was too many crumbs and he had to clean them up and the School
Board stuck with him. Anyway we got home this one evening from school
and mother wasn't there. She'd gone some place, the Ladies Ald Society