Jitterbug 1:1

I've tried to approach The Experiment as an attempt to understand the 1940s housewife as a whole woman. Not just the nitty gritty like housework, beauty rituals, vintage cookery, and not just the fun stuff like hairstyling, clothes, and movies --- but the rhythm of life and ways of relating to others which made up the context for all that. Things like etiquette, arts, and social activities - they can be so deeply engrained in the background of life that my '40s counterpart may not even have noticed them herself. Mind you, there's plenty of things about the 1940s cultural mindset that I'm perfectly happy to leave in the past, but there's much of value, I think, that could enrich our modern lives.

And if I'm ever going to truly understand the world to which my grandmothers belonged, I must hie myself to church.

Now if I can just get across the threshhold without being struck down by a thunderbolt, I wonder how my life might be shaped by going to Mass every week. (I'm being a little over-dramatic with the thunderbolts stuff. I was just in church last Sunday with my parents. Nothing happened.) I hope those of you who are deeply serious and devoted to your faith will not feel that I'm being flippant or proposing this in jest. I'm not. (Likewise, I hope those readers who might feel impelled to proselytize will step away from the comments button.) I've come to appreciate more with the years just how important and meaningful my parents' faith has been to them. My own relationship with God has been a long and stormy one, but there have been many occasions when going to church has been a comforting experience to me. I have theological differences with every religion out there, but despite all the churches I've "sampled" over the years, none has ever felt quite as much like home as the Catholic church in which I was raised.

My grandmothers had very different religious experiences. My paternal grandmother was raised in the Methodist church and married into the Catholic church. Her faith must have been deeply shaken when she was widowed at 36 (my age!) with four small children. But it also must have reminded her of her late husband and helped her in keeping his memory alive in her children's hearts. My maternal grandmother was raised in the Baptist church and married a Catholic man, much to the consternation of both their families. "Mixed marriage" was a big deal in rural America in the 1930s. (Her mother-in-law never accepted the marriage.) She and my grandfather set religion aside and raised their daughter outside either church.

This must have been fairly unusual in the small town in which they lived... Agnostics, atheists, working folks who were just too plain tired on their one day off in a six-day-working-week world - these good folks have existed in every time and place, but they were still a very small minority in 1940s America. If you were a member of the business class, you could lose clients and social standing if you weren't a member of some faith. For many people, the church to which they belonged was the center of their social activities. The vast majority of Americans were Christians and so on Sunday mornings the world came to a virtual pause for church. Stores and restaurants were closed. Social activities were taboo on Sunday mornings. Church services and religious music could be found across the radio dial. Things certainly picked up on Sunday afternoons, but even then most folks shared in experiences like hearty noon-day meals, visits with family, drives in the country, leisurely activities at the park or at home.

It's hard for me to imagine in 2009 how hushed and still Sunday mornings must once have seemed. Today, Sundays are like every other day of the week for almost all of the people I know. And yet, I think there's something of great value in taking regular time out every week to stop and reflect on your place in this world and feel gratitude for blessings. I may have mentioned this before, but I'd really like to bring back that kind of rest and ritual to my own life. So will I chafe at attending Mass so regularly in my Sunday best? Will I listen to the service with a new ear? Will I find myself joining the choir and crocheting doilies for the Christmas crafts fair with the other church ladies? Hmmm... I hope my red lipstick isn't too flashy for church!

Mistress of My Domain

Here it is just after 6:00 p.m. and my meager supper is finished. It can't have been that much smaller than most of my suppers, but for whatever reason it just felt meager tonight. Rats! Looks like I've got a long evening ahead... I think I'll torture myself and tell you all about last night's vintage dinner, courtesy of The American Woman's Cook Book (1945):

Baked Potato
Buttered Turnips
Beet Pickle Salad on Lettuce
Peach Sorbet

Have I ever even baked a potato in my own oven? I don't think I have. Having prepared potatoes umpteen different ways since beginning these vintage dinners, I was truly able to appreciate just how easy making a Baked Potato is for the housewife. It puts the oven through its paces, but, boy, is it worth it! I didn't like turnips years ago, but wanted to give them a try to see if my taste buds have matured. They weren't terrible. I could take 'em or leave 'em. The Peach Sorbet was my reducing-friendly substitute for Orange Sugarless Cake.

Beet Pickle isn't the kind of thing you whip up on a single day, so I compromised by purchasing a jar of Aunt Nellie's Pickled Beets at the supermarket. Many a 1940s housewife would've been able to jazz up a bland-ish meal by stepping into her cellar and picking up a jar of something she'd put up last summer. My maternal grandparents had an earthen cellar under their house and one of the greatest treats for my sisters and me when we were little was getting to unlatch that door, clamber carefully down the wooden steps, and run about in that cool, dark, mysterious space. At the bottom of the steps was a set of shelves filled with preserves of every variety imaginable, including a lovely pickled watermelon rind which must have been Grammie's specialty. I like to imagine that had I the time and space - not to mention the garden - I'd be pickling beets and watermelon rind for my own household stores! Anyway, my 1945 menu originally suggested that the Beet Pickle be suspended with celery in a lemon gelatin. I skipped the gelatin (as I'm sure you could've guessed), combined the diced Beet Pickle with diced celery, and served it on a bed of greens with a dollop of mayonnaise.



I'm not sure which room I was least looking forward to adding to my housekeeping routine in the beginning, but the bathroom placed in the Top Two. It's funny, because it's actually the smallest room in the house. You'd think it'd be a breeze. I absolutely dreaded having to clean the tub and the toilet regularly. Well, I've been doing that week in and week out for about a month now and I've got something to confess...

It's not that bad.

It helps me to break it into pieces and focus on one part of the tub and shower surround at a time - the end wall, the side wall, the shower wall, the tub. Lather, scrub, rinse. Lather, scrub, rinse. Top to bottom. Top to bottom. The tub is just a free-for-all with my trusty Comet, a scrub brush, and some piping hot water. I have a special scrubby sponge dedicated just to the bathroom. When it comes to the toilet, that's where those modern antibacterial wipes come in handy. They used to be my one and only tool when it came to housekeeping - *hanging my head in shame* --- the only thing I use them for now is for cleaning the outside of the toilet and the seat. Heck, even The Manual instructs its readers to have a cloth reserved for nothing more than cleaning the toilet. I think I'll add antibacterial wipes (for use on the toilet) to my small list of modern innovations that are worth their salt.

Did you ever see The Farmer's Wife? It's an amazing documentary about a struggling Nebraska farm family that aired on Frontline in 1998. An example of the very best that television has to offer... Well, there's a scene where Juanita Buschkoetter - farmer's wife and mother of three - is hard at work on her off-farm job. She cleans houses on a part-time basis. She's bending over and cleaning the toilet in this home so much bigger and nicer than her own and she says to the cameraman, "I don't mind cleaning houses, but I hate cleaning other people's toilets." I think of that scene every time I'm cleaning my own toilet and feel grateful in an instant that it's mine and not somebody else's. Juanita would have considered it a lucky break indeed to be able just to keep her own bathroom clean... If you've never seen this film, it's the kind of life-altering television you'll never forget. Netflix it immediatement.

Blue Monday

When I was growing up, we used to spend a couple weeks every summer visiting grandparents and other extended family in a little town in northern Maine where my parents were raised. Laundry Day at my grandmother's house was a big event. I remember marveling as she wheeled this appliance out from the corner of the kitchen. Six days a week, it blended into the woodwork - but on Laundry Day it became the star of the show. My grandmother's washing machine must have been at least thirty years old. It didn't have an internal water supply. Grammie would connect it by a hose to the kitchen sink and fill the machine with water twice for each load of laundry. I suppose the first time for a wash cycle and the second time for a rinse. When all the laundry had been carried off in baskets to be hung outdoors on the clothesline, the machine was rolled back into its corner where it lurked about until Laundry Day came around again.

The washers of the 1940s - and even the washers of my grandmother's day - were a far cry from the miracle workers of today. Today, we drop our clothes inside, dash a bit of liquid in the proper reservoir, and go. The machine takes it from there and we open it up about a half hour later to clean, well-wrung clothes ready to be whisked into another machine for drying. My '40s counterpart would have marveled at the convenience. Her washer did some, but very little of the work for her. In fact, it was only one step up from handwashing clothes. My manual spends almost as much time making suggestions for washing the laundry by hand as it does for washing it by machine, which tells me that probably only half of its readers were lucky enough to own a washing machine.

In just 1 hour and 18 minutes, my two loads of laundry this morning were clean and dry. And on a rainy day to boot. To contrast, here is a sampling of the instructions required to run a washing machine, circa 1945:

1. Fill washer to the water line with water of correct temperature (130 degrees F. for white cottons and linens; 110 degrees F. for colored fabrics).

2. Add water softener if necessary.

3. Add measured mild soap (in flake, chip, powder or bead form, or shaved bar soap) in the amount necessary to make standing suds.

4. Operate the washer until the soap is completely dissolved and there is a topping of suds 2-3 inches deep.

This is all before the clothes are even placed in the washer, mind you!

5. Add the correct load of clothes as suggested by the manufacturer.

6. Wash rumpled or lightly soiled white articles first, then more heavily soiled pieces. Colored articles are washed in this same order.

7. Time the washing period:

5 minutes for rumpled or lightly soiled articles

10-15 minutes for heavily soiled articles

8. If clothes are not clean at the end of this time, wash them a second time for 4-6 minutes in fresh, clean suds.

9. If stubborn soil remains on certain areas, scrub gently with a soft brush and thick suds until clean.

10. If the water is soiled after one load of clothes is washed, drain it off and prepare fresh suds for the second load.

11. Extract the wash water thoroughly by wringing or spinning before putting the clothes in the first rinse water.

And that's just the wash cycle. Three rinse cycles were recommended for each load of laundry, and every one of these cycles required draining the washer and refilling it. The laundress had to prepare a pot of starch on a stovetop for everything from children's clothes to blouses, shirts, and slacks. And each piece of laundry had to be pressed through the wringer before being hung to dry. What a project! It's hard for me to fathom having to spend so much time on laundry. And for many women, their washing machines were located in unfinished basements. Not a particularly bright or cheery place to work. No wonder this day earned the moniker Blue Monday.