Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 3.
Great, Great Grandmother's Day
Bertha (Wilson) Holt
Do we modern housewives ever think of the conditions that existed in the early part of the nineteenth century — say, in great, great grandmother's day’?
For example, when she wanted to bake she didn't have a shining white enamel stove with push-button gadgets such as we have today. Her oven was part of her fireplace or hearth. She had to stoke it for a couple of hours with four foot hardwood logs, shovel the ashes out and scrape the soot from the top and sides of the oven before she could start to bake. She didn't have a thermometer to tell her the oven temperature — but she did have her own way of determining it. She held her hand in the oven and counted to forty. If the oven was too hot she cooled it off by dipping a broom into a pail of water and twirled it around in the oven until the broom came out dry.
Now she did not go to all that work of heating her oven to make a pan of biscuits for supper. She started to bake at the crack of dawn and continued until long after sunset. First she baked her brown bread, then her white bread, pies, cakes, puddings, custards, baked apples and numerous other sweets, and finally before tumbling into bed exhausted, she would place an iron pot full of beans and salt pork far back into the oven and leave them until morning.
In her household, not unlike some modern households, they always had beer-kegs of it — which they brewed themselves. After great, great grandpapa and the boys had polished off a keg of beer great, great grandmother salvaged the dregs from the bottom of the barrel. This was her yeast for making bread.
In the cellar there was a barrel which contained some lye, and during the winter months all fat, dripping and grease was stored in this barrel. On the first fine spring day you would see her outdoors making soap. She had to make her lye from wood ash, which had to be blended carefully with the grease and water or her hands would show the result of burns if too much lye was added to the soap.
Of necessity she knew something about deep-freeze because every November she would make a hundred pies or more, freeze them and store them in crocks or chests. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the blanket chests, which Antique dealers ask fabulous prices for today, were used to store these pies when the blankets were in use during the cold winter months.
Remember there was no electricity or even coal oil lamps. They made their candles. The young girls in the family, who were learning to spin, practised by twirling the candle-wicks in their fingers, then dipping the wick in tallow and beeswax, cooling them and dipping them again until the candle became the desired shape.
She not only had to be a doctor and nurse but pharmacist as well. There were no corner drug-stores for her to run to for Buckley's cough syrup or a bottle of aspirin.
What would she think of our modern kitchens with our oven controlled stoves, refrigerators, garbage disposal units, dish-washers, ironers and all the other appliances we have to take the drudgery out of house-work’? I believe she would think that Aladdin and his wonderful lamp had ceased to be a fictional character. And as for our super markets — she would consider them a classic in merchandising. But l rather think she would scoff at the idea of a paper towel being placed at our convenience in case we got our dainty hands wet from handling a head of lettuce.
With all these modern miracles at our finger—tips are we any better off as far as security is concerned? She feared illness in her household; wolves and wild beasts and also attacks from savage Indians which could wipe out her entire family. With all these fears in her heart, she bravely made a home. I like to think that the red geranium blooming in her window was the symbol of her faith and courage.
Today we have our fears. We fear illness — our hospitals are over-crowded. We fear inflation — the wolf at our door. We fear an Atomic attack which could wipe out our entire civilization. With all these fears in our hearts, we too must make a home. Our modern symbol of faith and courage is not the red geranium, but our red, red lip-stick!