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Grandmother's Receet
Added to site
April 29, 2001
Background:
On his CBS Radio show on Friday morning, March 30, 1962, Arthur
Godfrey read an article from the Little Rock Variety. It
began, "Years ago when my mother was a bride, my Kentucky
grandmother gave her her 'receet' for washing clothes. This
treasured bit of writing now hangs above my gleaming automatic washer."
My mother was
listening, and the recipe for laundry day reminded her of her own
grandmother from her childhood in the hills of southeastern
Ohio. She wrote to CBS in New York, and they sent her
a copy. Then she asked her brother Ralph, a vice president of
the Whitman Publishing Company, to have the document typeset and
framed. When we moved into our new house the next January, this
reminder of life before appliances was hung on the wall of the
laundry room. It stayed there for 36 years. |
Grandmother's Receet
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1. |
bild fire
in back yard to heet kettle of rain water. |
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2. |
set tubs
so smoke won't blow in eyes if wind is peart. |
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3. |
shave 1
hole cake lie sope in bilin water. |
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4. |
sort
things. make 3 piles. 1 pile white. 1 pile
cullord. 1 pile werk briches and rags. |
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5. |
stur flour
in cold water to smooth then thin down with bilin water. |
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6. |
rub dirty
spots on board, scrub hard, then bile. rub cullord but don't
bile just rench and starch. |
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7. |
take white
things out of kettle with broom stick handel then rench, blew and starch. |
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8. |
spred tee
towels on grass. |
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9. |
hang old
rags and briches on fence. |
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10. |
pore rench
water in flower bed. |
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11. |
scrub
porch with hot sopy water. |
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12. |
turn tubs
upside down. |
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13. |
go put on
cleen dress, smooth hair with side combs, brew cup of tee, set and
rest and rock a spell and count yore blessins.
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In
this photo from August 1927, standing between my mother's parents
(Emma and Harry Buckingham) are her
Aunt Lizzie and Grandmother Mary.
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