“Myrtle sent two books . . . One book is Cross Road, a story of Arabian adventures, fascinating but harsh and cruel. It is by Joseph Kessel – never read anything by him before. The other is “The Coming of the Lord,” by Sarah Gertrude Millin. Never heard of her before. The story is laid in South Africa and concerns a religious sect. I have only just begun it. We do enjoy our evenings reading. We have a lot of geographics to read – also Colliers, the past L.H.J., three Copper Monthlies, Pathfinder, Daily Chronicle, Clearwater Tribune, and M.W.A. monthly. Also Christian Herald. Dad finds plenty to do these short days and so do I. We have been canning meat and presently I’ll be making soap and turning sheets and getting my dresses made.”
I can just picture Jack and Ina sitting companionably in the living room before the fire or perhaps at the dining room table on long winter’s evenings. Ina has tidied the kitchen after a simple supper and for the next couple of hours they will read. The only sounds will be the hiss of the Aladdin lamp, the steady ticking of the mantel clock, and the occasional turning of a page. Maybe one of them will interrupt the quietude to share a passage from a book or an article. You just know that’s the way they spent the long winter evenings.
I so enjoy the presentation of Ina and her family through her own words. It’s fascinating to me that since I’ve identified this interest in the details of farm life in the 1930s, I see it everywhere. I ordered five books on Amazon the other day, all of them relating to the values of a simpler time. My research takes me not so much to history as to recipe boxes and books, vintage magazines and handiwork patterns, photograph albums and the contents of old trunks. And yesterday there was yet another interesting book review in the Lewiston Tribune -- “Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression,” the memoirs of Mildred Armstrong Kalish, now 85. Quoting from the review: “She briefly describes her family – an absent father, strict grandparents, spirited aunts, mischievous siblings and a complicated mother. Yet it’s their chores, recipes, old sayings, pranks and virtues that dominate the book.” And in the final paragraph of the review, Mrs. Kalish says, “’And, of course, my momma is practically a slim volume in itself, and understanding my mother has taken me about, I guess, the last 80 years, so that will be my next (book).’”
Those words, “complicated mother,” stood out to me and immediately piqued my interest because that’s the way I think of Ina. She has a high school education, a teaching certificate, a love of the intellectual, and an obvious talent for descriptive writing. Yet, she’s a farm wife and mother whose daily work is hard. During her lifetime, conveniences will become commonplace in the American home, but it won’t happen for her.
[This picture of Ina is captioned "A spring wash day 1921 by Irl."]
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