The Housewife's Tool Box: Radio

Whether you owned an electric set or a battery-operated set, the radio was a constant and boon companion to the 1940s housewife. I used to think of the housewife as quite a lonely creature. From the time she saw her husband and children off to work and school until they began straggling home mid-afternoon, the work at home must have seemed a bit isolating at times. Especially for women whose children were all in school. But I'm not inclined to think that way any longer. Between marketing, callers, the round of chores they shared in common with neighbors, and - most importantly - the radio, I'd guess that most women didn't feel isolated or lonely at all. The outside world was regularly dropping by, so to speak.

There's an extraordinary recording which survives from Thursday, September 21, 1939 (70 years ago next week) when WJSV, a CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, recorded its entire broadcast day for the National Archives. The reason they picked that particular day is that President Roosevelt was expected to address the House and Senate in joint session regarding the war in Europe, but what's most fascinating to me is all the other stuff. All the mundane, ordinary programs that could be heard by anybody who tuned in a radio between 6:30 in the morning until 1:00 that night. This recording gives you such an amazing window into the kinds of things a typical housewife might hear piping out from the radio as she went about her daily work. It's probably as close as we'll ever get to a time machine... Check out how The Manual's skeleton housekeeping schedule for a Thursday compares to the radio programs as heard on this Thursday in September 1939:

Early Morning: Preparing and serving breakfast
6:30 - 8:30 am: Sundial (a morning radio program/part music-part DJ banter-part local ads)
8:30 - 8:45 am: Certified Magic Carpet (quiz show)
Forenoon: General pickup. Light cleaning of all rooms
8:45 - 10:00 am: Soap operas, in 15-minute episodes (Bachelor's Children, Pretty Kitty Kelly, The Story of Myrt and Marge, Hilltop House, Stepmother)
Thorough cleaning of bedrooms
10:00 - 10:15 am: Mary Lee Taylor (cooking program)
10:15 - 11:00 am: More soap operas (Brenda Curtis, Big Sister, Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories)
11:00 - 11:15 am: Jean Abbey (local department store infomercial disguised as news)
Noon: Preparing foods for lunch and dinner. Lunch, dishes, cleaning up kitchen.
11:15 am - 1:00 pm: More soap operas (When a Girl Marries, The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, The Goldbergs, Life Can be Beautiful, Road of Life, This Day is Ours)
Early Afternoon: Thorough cleaning of bathroom
1:00 - 1:15 pm: News
1:15 - 1:45 pm: Still more soap operas (The Life and Love of Dr. Susan, Your Family and Mine)
1:45 - 3:15 pm: President Roosevelt's Address, along with pre- and post-address commentary
Late Afternoon: Rest, relaxation, correspondence, reading, personal care, etc.
3:15 - 3:30 pm: Another soap opera (The Career of Alice Blair)
3:30 - 3:45 pm: News
3:45 - 4:00 pm: Scattergood Baines (a Western)
Final dinner preparation
4:00 - 5:15 pm: Cleveland Indians vs. Washington Senators (baseball game)
5:15 - 5:30 pm: The World Dances (music)
5:30 - 6:00 pm: News
6:00 - 7:00 pm: Comedy programs (Amos and Andy, The Parker Family, Joe E. Brown)
Early Evening: Washing dishes
7:00 - 7:30 pm: Ask-it Basket (quiz show)
7:30 - 8:00 pm: Strange as it Seems (true stories/tabloid-type program)
8:00 - 9:00 pm: Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour (variety/reality)
9:00 - 9:30 pm: The Columbia Workshop (drama)
9:30 - 10:00 pm: Americans at Work (true stories/documentary-type program)
10:00 - 10:15 pm: News
10:15 - 10:30 pm: Music
10:30 - 11:30 pm: News
11:30 pm - 1:00 am: Live big band music from city ballrooms and hotels (Teddy Powell Band, Louis Prima Orchestra, Bob Chester Orchestra)

Even today, in 2009, when I could just as easily have something playing on the television or the computer while I do my housework, it's always the radio I reach for. Sometimes it's vintage radio programs like The Great Gildersleeve or Suspense - which is great for cleaning the bathroom! There's nothing like a suspenseful drama to get you through the grimiest chores. I read one reminiscence from a Michigan housewife who remembered that she loved listening to Dragnet while she cleaned house in the late '40s. I can totally identify.

Sometimes it's modern radio, like a local country station. A great beat or a melody you love singing along to (especially when there's nobody around to hear) can make all the difference when you're doing something repetitive - like ironing or sweeping. In fact, if you could peek into my kitchen on Tuesday nights, you'd probably find me dancing at the ironing board! And I bet there was many a housewife in the 1940s who jitterbugged her way through her chores and sang along with Bing Crosby as she sectioned the family's grapefruit for breakfast.

Incidentally, what I think I love about radio most is just its randomness. I can choose the genre, but I don't have complete control over what music I'm going to hear. Modern entertainment has become so controlled. Between our TIVOs and iPods, we can easily choose precisely which programs and songs we want to see and hear every day of the week. We don't even have to listen to commercials. But isn't there something kind of exciting watching TV or listening to radio in real time and discovering new programs or songs you might never have planned on catching? These days, it feels a bit like I'm walking on the edge.

Wordplay

I sat down to write my post tonight and came very close to kicking things off with a saying that proves an interesting reflection on the value society has for housekeeping. What I was about to say is, "First, a little housekeeping." A funny saying, isn't it? Something you hear a lot in meetings or classes or conference breakouts when the team leader/professor/speaker has some dull details to get out of the way before they launch their agenda/lecture/workshop. Maybe they need to announce something about the schedule. Maybe it's something about the date the next assignment is due or an announcement about a room change.

As those of you who keep house know, there's nothing "little" about it. It's the kind of work that breathes life into a house and makes it a home. Work that nourishes, clothes, and provides a clean roof for a family. Housekeeping is absolutely indispensable --- and yet people who work outside the home are constantly dumbing it down and diminishing its value in the very choice of words like the ones above.

So I take it back! What I'd planned on saying is that one of my readers, Wendy, asked me a while back to add a gadget to my blog which would allow her to read it through "My Yahoo." Wendy, if you're reading this, I haven't been able to find that gadget for the life of me. If you could point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.

Can you think of any other phrases that started out as housekeeping lingo but morphed into something else? I can think of a few. When you "put something on the back burner," you're leaving it be for awhile. Today, "light a fire under" someone means something quite different than it did to housewives in the age of woodstoves. Let's not forget "airing the dirty laundry" and "clean sweep."

Love Story

Remember how I said after making my first 1945 dinner menu how much better the food I prepared for myself tasted? Well, I think I'm gonna have to take that back. Two dinners later, I'm finding myself so tired from the workout in the kitchen that I can hardly taste my meal.

And it is such a workout. Balancing a great pot of potatoes as you carry them over to drain in the sink. Twisting about between the pots on your stovetop so you can lift the lid on one without injuring yourself with steam from another. Just working in all that heat is a challenge. I turned my air conditioning up and pulled my hair back simply to try and feel a little more cool. By the time I sat down to dinner, I was wiped - and almost not even hungry enough to enjoy the meal.

Whipped Potatoes

Buttered Beets

Tossed Greens Salad

Chiffonade Dressing

Chocolate Pudding

I suppose this is the same kind of curve anybody goes through as they're getting in shape. Toning the muscles, learning the moves... I have to remind myself that the most I've done in "making dinner" for years has been: Open box. Heat in oven. This is a whole new world for me, and it's going to take some time. I hope! It really makes me wonder what dinner was like for Mother back in the '40s. Could she really enjoy a meal as much as might her husband and children when she had worked sooooooooo hard to plan it, shop it, and prepare it?

The 1940s seem to have been an era when home-cooked and commercially prepared foods both found a home at the dinner table. I'm trying to keep that tradition myself, including at least one item that's somewhat ready-to-eat. Last week: Canned Green Beans. This week: boxed Chocolate Pudding mix. These items were both readily available to most American households and - for a "bachelor girl" like myself - would have been particularly important. What a blessing they must have seemed to a busy '40s housewife! Even one course - made one or two steps easier --- what a gift. We see prepared foods today with such an overlay of their nutritional dangers. The MSG, the sodium, the preservatives and additives, the trans-saturated fats. It's hard to remember how wonderful they must once have seemed. And in their infancy, prepared foods weren't quite as chock full of the not-so-good stuff as they are today. They were still relatively basic, but what a help to knock even a quarter-hour off the time it took to prepare dinner...

Another miracle - the dishwasher. This was an appliance available only in the '40s to those with some serious cash. As hard as you work towards preparing a meal - and as nice as it would be to relax at the table and enjoy your meal - the dirty pots and pans and cooking utensils can absolutely haunt you! In my case, it was the red water from my pot of beets that had splattered all over my nice, clean stovetop. All I could think about was how nice it had been to see my reflection in my stovetop the day before. Would the beet juice stain? What about the cutting board? Would it be forever pink? There was still some milk left in a saucepan since I'd overestimated how much I needed for the Whipped Potatoes. Would it stick terribly to the pan?

Having worked so hard over this meal, it was great to scrape and rinse and whisk those dishes out of sight. I used to think of my dishwasher as my archnemesis. It didn't seem to clean the dishes very thoroughly. There was always that nasty crumb tray to clean out. And I never understood the whole rinse/don't rinse debate. "Of course you don't rinse," I thought. "What good does it do to have a dishwasher if it's not going to do the job for you?" Well, I'm here to tell you... it's all about the rinse. Since I started rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher (per the manual), I've found that only an occasional dish or utensil has a bit of residue and needs to be soaked and re-washed. The crumb tray? I haven't had to clean it in weeks. 1940s housewives who were lucky enough to own a dishwasher must have cleaned 'em 'til they shone and kissed 'em when no one was looking!

Housework and Childcare

The last few days have been frazzled ones. My niece (I'll call her Kitten) has been sick with a virus since the day her mother left. Poor thing! My brother-in-law and I took her to the emergency room last night as we were getting really worried about dehydration, but the doctor told us she was in good shape and the virus would just have to run its course. We just have to keep finding creative ways to get her to drink, drink, drink. And with a toddler - even with a low energy level - the last thing they want to do is be in the dreaded bed, so she's still up and about. I've been trying to find lots of quiet things we can do indoors. Just this morning, I'm starting to feel a little peaked, so I'm afraid I've caught the virus myself and won't be of much help in a day or two.

The first evening I was there, Kitten was still feeling pretty good. As I tried to wash up the dinner dishes while she was playing in the living room, I couldn't help thinking about housework as it relates to childcare. Mothers of small children really have to be quite creative and flexible in order to get anything done. It seems to be all about corraling them where you can watch them long enough to do a few dishes here, a load of laundry there. Naptime or bedtime seems like it would be a great time to get things done, but Kitten's nursery is on the same floor as the kitchen and living room, so I don't want to make too much noise until she's sound asleep. (It'll sound too much like there's some party she's missing!) Besides, I found myself taking a nap at naptime yesterday.

The manual mentions children frequently. The authors recognized how important it was in designing or redesigning work spaces that mothers be able to keep an eye on their children at all times. "One end of the kitchen, away from dangerous areas near the range, can sometimes be reserved for play space." Here, a "low cupboard" could be set aside for toys or "cooking equipment" with which children might safely play. They encouraged mothers to find housekeeping tasks that children could help with even when it made the job a bit longer:

Small children are always intrigued by the work that is done in the kitchen. Almost invariably they want to "help," and if this urge is understood and valued, the children will find tremendous satisfaction in cooperative work, besides feeling "wanted," which is important to happy family relationships. Then, too, the educational value of guided cooperative work is an important factor in child training.

The laundry room is also a space where mothers had to spend a significant amount of time before the process was better automated. An "enclosed play space" was recommended for this room so that babies and toddlers could amuse themselves under Mother's watchful eye. Older children could play outdoors, but a window should look out on the yard so that Mother could keep an eye on them, too.

A whole chapter is dedicated to furnishing rooms for children - from nurseries for infants to rooms for adolescents. The authors of the manual advise their readers, though, that children should spend most of their time with the family. By the 1940s, the age of nannies and governesses was long gone in the U. S., and mothers were expected to be the primary caregivers for their youngest children. Living rooms should also contain "child centers":

"A table, chairs, and shelves for toys and games can be assembled inexpensively..."

Here, on my own child-less home front, I've been getting along pretty smoothly. I moved Thursday's cleaning-of-the-bedroom to Friday evening. It occurred to me while dusting that it's no coincidence the manual instructs the housewife to dust everything before vacuuming. All that dust that's been building up on surfaces high and low should be lightly settled on the carpet before it's vacuumed. I also realized that my dust rag didn't get near as dirty this week as it did last week. If you're dusting your bedrooms every week, your cleaning materials will be easier to wash themselves.

I didn't plan my morning very wisely yesterday and ran out of time before making my bed. When I got home from the hospital, I was feeling so blue I skipped the evening routine entirely, but I wasn't too blue to notice how much it crapped to be climbing into an unmade bed. It's amazing how quickly I've become accustomed to that little luxury!

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

I started off the day with a breakfast menu straight from the pages of the February 1947 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It's one of three menus in an article called "Why Don't You Eat a Good Breakfast?" The author presents profiles of three fictional Americans - the reasons they don't eat breakfast and some purportedly practical and tasty solutions. Here's an excerpt from the first profile:

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

Mrs. F. is overweight, yet has many colds. Her usual breakfast of coffee, frosted sweet rolls (350 calories each) is short of proteins, vitamins, minerals...

While hanging wash, Mrs. F. feels chilled, starts sneezing. Her resistance is low (studies show possible relation between resistance to tuberculosis and foods rich in protein, Vitamins A and C). [Way to scare the skirts off your readers!] A breakfast of fruit, enriched cereal, and egg would have given her food essentials for morning tasks.

Interested in a dieting fad, she decides to skip breakfast entirely, has to draw on her reserves of fat for heat and energy every morning. In a short time she suffers from a fat shortage, marked by constant hunger, lack of pep, vague discomfort...

Woman weighing 130 pounds, keeping house, has a daily energy requirement of about 2,300 calories. Milk is a must.

Suggested breakfast
1 slice canned pineapple with sirup
2/3 cup oatmeal
1 cup whole milk for cereal
1/4 cup coffee cream
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 slices toast (enriched white bread)
Coffee

I did make a couple adaptations. Used 1% instead of whole milk with my oatmeal and coffee. Skipped the buttered toast entirely. But then I'm not yet doing the kinds of hard physical labor Mrs. F. was doing in 1947. After my morning chores, I was free today 'til this evening. Stay tuned for Mr. F.'s breakfast issues in an upcoming post...

My routine is going to see a few adaptations of its own during the next two weeks. My sister is taking her youngest home on Wednesday to spend several days with our parents, so I'm going to be playing substitute mom for my older niece. On weeknights, I'll be picking her up at her grandmother's when I get out of work and staying at her house until my brother-in-law gets home from work around 10:30. And because of the way his work schedule falls, I'll have her both days next weekend from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. It's going to be lovely to spend so much one-on-one time with her, but I am going to be one tired chickadee by the time I crawl into bed each night. (She's only two years old and a ball of energy!) As for housework --- my goal is just to keep things running at the level they have been while all this extra work is afoot. No more new missions until my sister is home and I've had a day or two to recover. If I can keep everything running "as is" for the next two weeks, I'll be very proud.

I may have to shift some of my daily chores around a bit, though. Which is something I need to be able to do with any routine. I want to be sure that I still have some empty-ish time slots left over in every week so that I can make some adjustments when something social comes up or when family calls. As comforting as it is to have an appointed day and time for every chore - and as critical as that is while I'm trying to make habits of these chores - I need to build some flexibility into my schedule so that unexpected things don't trip me up. I think that's going to be key to getting through the next two weeks and getting through life, period. A 1940s housewife would have needed some flexibility herself for that monthly club meeting or when her spouse or child was sick at home and needed extra tending. The daily stuff needs to get done no matter what, but the weekly stuff needs to be more portable. What do you think?

The Business Center

One of the things I love about the manual and lots of vintage women's magazines, cookbooks, etc. is that they give total props to the work of housewives as a profession. They get it. They get that these women spent seven days a week on the job. And we all need a corner office - or even just a corner of an office - to call our own. In this case, it makes perfect sense to locate the housewife's "business center" in the kitchen. It's the place where she spends hour after hour preparing and cleaning up after meals. It's the place many a housewife stores the tools and solutions needed for cleaning the rest of the house. The first stop when she gets home from doing her marketing and sometimes even the place where she does the wash and the ironing:

The kitchen is one logical location for the homemaker's "office," which need not occupy much space if it is well planned.

Every homemaker needs a desk of some description, where accounts can be kept, shopping lists made out, recipes copied and quiet planning accomplished. Files of bills and receipts, manufacturers' direction booklets, guarantees, etc., should be located here, as well as reference books on homemaking problems.

A calendar is a necessity in this business center, and a small radio and extension telephone might well be part of the equipment. A bulletin board to keep the family posted as to each person's whereabouts, to hold reminders for the forgetful ones, to hold order lists, and to give news of general interest, may be hung on the wall.

Where should I make a little "business center" for my new job at home? I don't have a whole lot of room in this one-bedroom apartment, so I think I'll let my kitchen table do double duty - actually it's triple duty now since that's where I'm doing my ironing! There's a tall cabinet just a couple steps away from the table which has been serving as kind of a catch-all for me, but I'm going to clean it out a bit and clear off one shelf for just the kinds of things the authors of the manual describe: my cookbooks, my recipe file, the operating guides for some of my small kitchen appliances. I've already got a radio on the table and a magnetic notepad on the fridge where I keep track of the groceries and supplies I need to pick up next time I'm out. Now that I know that the drawer under my range doesn't have a broiler inside, I'm going to use that space to store some of the pots and pans I'm not using every day.

I made the Broiled Grapefruit again this morning with just a sprinkling of brown sugar. It was a little better, but I'd certainly rather just have it fresh from the icebox. It's hard to improve on Mother Nature in this case! Humble Labor made a great point though in her comment to my blog two days ago. A warm fruit dish is very fitting for chilly winter mornings.

Woman's Dilemma

LIFE magazine teamed up with Bloomingdale's in June 1947 to arrange for a couple of photographs to illustrate a piece called "Woman's Dilemma." I haven't seen the article itself, but it must have had something to do with the question of working inside the home vs. outside. Anyway, the photographs are pretty impressive. Here's the caption:

Housewife Marjorie McWeeney ironing amidst symbolic display of her week's housework at Bloomingdale's store incl. 35 beds to be made, 750 items of glass & china, 400 pieces of silverware to wash, 174 lbs. of food to prepare, some of 250 pieces of laundry on a line, & a ringer washing machine.

Mrs. Fergusen's Laundry

The Library of Congress holds an incredible collection of images taken by Farm Security Administration and Office of War Administration photographers during the 1930s and '40s. Here's a fun little series featuring a West Virginian housewife and her laundry. I'll split them up over a few posts during the next day or two. Enjoy!

Meet the Fergusens. Ann, Nancy, Mother - a.k.a. Mamie, Dad - a.k.a. Bob, and Jimmie. The Fergusens live in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Bob Fergusen is principal at the local junior high school.

This is the Fergusen house:


Mrs. Fergusen must have a lot of laundry with a family of five... Here she is in her basement operating the wringer so the wet clothes will be a little less wet. She may own a Thor washing machine, but check out all those washtubs. It looks like Mrs. Fergusen rinses her clothes by hand. And dries the family dainties indoors. No need to dry everything outside when the neighbors live so close by!

Competing Visions

Since I still had a Grapefruit Half left over from yesterday, today's breakfast was more of the same. Once again, I ended up with citrus juice on my tablecloth. I've decided that I'm either going to have to loosen each of the segments at the kitchen countertop before bringing my grapefruit to the table or take the tablecloth off the table when grapefruits or oranges are on the menu! Maybe I'll have pick up some non-vintage table linens for just these kinds of mornings...

I came across an article in a July 1944 issue of The American Home with one woman's routine in keeping house. "I Run My Career Like a Star" was written by Celia Mattox, a mother of three. Here's the bit on her morning schedule:

Whatever day it is, it begins at 6:30. To wash, I slip into a becoming dressing gown - watch the shade, for a strong color gives a pasty look to a face without any make-up. Then I change into my blue denim outfit to prepare breakfast. [She explains earlier that while at home during the day she likes to wear a "becoming cotton blouse" with a blue denim skirt and "gay apron."] That over, the dishes are stacked, the house is aired, and I snatch a few minutes to do my exercises.

There's one woman who opted for a "dressing gown" while she spent some time in the bathroom washing up, but she was fully dressed before hitting the kitchen. I notice that she mentions stacking the dishes (maybe she doesn't wash her breakfast dishes right away either) and airing her house (fresh air is given lots of emphasis in the 1945 housekeeping manual). It sounds like Mrs. Mattox wouldn't have much to argue about with the authors of the manual - at least when it comes to her early morning routine. Heck, maybe she even owned a copy herself!



The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947), edited by Helen W. Kendall, also contains a schedule for housework, though it's not quite as detailed as the one in the 1945 manual. Each member of the household is instructed to "hang up night clothes and put away slippers" before finishing up in their bedrooms in the morning. As soon as breakfast is over, "the dishes should be washed and the kitchen straightened up before you go about other household work."

• Remove dishes from the table, scrape, and rinse under the faucet if they need it. Stack them neatly at one side of the sink.
  
• Put away foods that belong in the refrigerator.
  
• Clear away waste food. Get rid of grounds from coffee or tea pot and empty cooking utensils which have been soaking during the meal.
  
• Clean sink so that it will be ready for dishwashing.
  
• Prepare dishwater and wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Kendall suggests that the living room be tidied up just before going to bed at night. "To start each day with the room neat, take a few minutes before going to bed to pick up newspapers and magazines, empty the ash trays, and take glasses into the kitchen." While the 1945 manual advises every member of the family to do their part in straightening up the living room at bedtime, they seem to have built this step into the post-breakfast routine just in case others hadn't done their part after Mother retired for the evening. Those crazy teenagers and their record players! As a one-woman household, I have more control over this situation, so tidying up the living room at bedtime rather than in the morning is certainly an option.

Kendall recommends that pots and pans be soaked during the meal so they're ready for dishwashing as soon as you are. A great concept, but what if your family's interested in a second serving? This would probably work out fine for me unless I had any leftovers that needed to be dispatched with beforehand. The biggest way in which Kendall's routine differs from my 1945 housekeeping manual is dishwashing. She is adamant that the breakfast dishes must be washed before doing anything else. This is not a bad idea, but the fact that I have a dishwasher which only gets filled up a couple times a week makes it kind of a moot point. I might give some thought to getting the pots and pans washed up and put away right after breakfast. If I straightened up the living room at bedtime, that'd free up some time for dishwashing in the a.m.

What do you think? Have you come across any vintage housekeeping schedules that offer advice for these early morning chores?

Busy as a Bee

After lunch, it's time for Mrs. Amberg to give the living room a final touch. She's got guests coming for dinner tonight! Then off to the garage to see about the car - and a trip downtown with the children after picking Peter up from school. I love her spectator pumps and the striped awnings over the windows looking out on the backyard...

Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, standing on ladder to place special china plate as decoration above doorway in living room that she decorated herself, as her son Tony plays on the floor in their rented house.

Jane Amberg conferring w. mechanic at gas station about the car she uses to chauffeur her husband to & from his office & get the children back & forth to school.

Jane Amberg, w. Peter, Tony & Pamela, as they go to drugstore to buy ice cream cones after the boys had haircuts at local barbershop in town.

Jane Amberg rapping admonishingly on window in bkgrd. as she oversees her kids Peter, 7, climbing slide ladder while Tony, 5, blocks the slide & Pamela gets kicked out of tent while playing w. neighbor children in backyard playground.

A Morning with the Ambergs

A few more pictures of Mrs. Amberg hard at work at home in September 1941. It's interesting that the shoes she's wearing are not the pumps we usually see in vintage ads of women at work; they're just oxfords. And she's wearing cotton socks. So she's dressed for comfort, with her hair tied up in a simple ribbon. Before preparing lunch, she's changed into a striped dress - maybe because Gilbert was coming home. Looks like it's toasted sandwiches and soup on the menu at the Amberg house. Stay tuned tomorrow to see how this 1941 housewife spent the afternoon...


Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, busy straightening up before launching into some heavy cleaning w. dust mop & carpet sweeper in her living room at home.


Jane Amberg scrubbing the bathtub in bathroom at home.


Jane Amberg using pop-up toaster w. slices of bread as she makes sandwiches for her three children at lunchtime in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg, serving lunch to her husband Gilbert who has come home fr. the office a few minutes away & her ever-present kids at the kitchen table at home.

Mrs. Amberg

Today was kind of a maintenance day. I did my early morning chores in the bedroom and sat down to some microwaved leftover pancakes for breakfast. There are plenty left for breakfast tomorrow morning, so it'll be another day or so before I have any new tales from the kitchen.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that the Griddlecakes recipe calls for "melted shortening." Vegetable oil must have been just coming onto the market in 1945 and not yet widely available. It certainly saves some time - not having to melt a tablespoon of shortening on the stovetop - but maybe vegetable oil's one of the reasons my pancakes weren't very good.

LIFE magazine has just made its photographic archives available online and there's a sweet little series of pictures called "Occupation: Housewife" that were taken in a Kankakee, Illinois home in September 1941. Since I don't have much news to report from the home front today, I'll post a few of these photos and add a few more as soon as I have a chance. Here's a real '40s housewife hard at work... Enjoy!


Housewife & mother, Jane Amberg, 32, posing w. her husband of eleven yrs., Gilbert & their three kids Pamela, 4, Tony, 5, and Peter, 7, in front of large two-storey house they lease.


Jane Amberg, shushing her husband Gilbert, as they sit having quiet 6:30 a.m. breakfast before their three kids wake up, in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg making one of the four beds she does daily after doing breakfast dishes and getting the kids to school, at home.

Jane Amberg loading the automatic washing machine w. several days dirty clothes in basement at home.