I was a perpetual provocation to my mother. She often told me that I could see nothing around the house unless it jumped up and bit me. Also, I was the most forgetful person she had ever known. She even threatened to tie a string around my finger to help me remember. Invariably when she asked me to bring a few things from the store I'd forget at least one, so I had to agree with her. So why am I telling you this? Because I am now about to get into our home- life in Cayman some of which is in the fringe areas of memory and others might have perceived them differently.

But before I go any further let me answer a question from Susan and Lynda about mother (see, I'm not so forgetful after all). Mother had dark blue eyes and black Hair (but not jet-black). My father had brown eyes but his father had bright blue eyes (his mother died, I believe, the year before I was born). Of my brothers and sisters, Grace and Sam had black or very dark brown eyes and black hair. Addie, Lois, George, Doris and Edith were blondes with blue eyes while the rest of us were variegated.

Mother was nearly always the first up in the mornings and the last to quit work at night. It was the responsibility of the boys to do whatever heavy work there was to be done such as finding, cutting, hauling and splitting wood, hauling water from the cistern and bringing in what fruit and vegetables mother needed. Most of the time mother had one or more servants who would do this work also.

Monday was Laundry Day at our house. You will have difficulty believing this story of wash-day, but it is true. I wish I could remember all the details, but it goes something like this: Firewood would be placed between cinder blocks in the back yard. An empty bath-tub (made of galvanized steel), probably the same one we took a bath in, would be set atop the cinder blocks and someone would draw water from our cistern hand-over-hand with a rope and bucket (the cistern would hold probably about 5500 gallons) and carry it to mother and empty it in her washtub. Mother would then start the fire and the water-hauling would continue until she had the right amount in the tub. While the water is getting hot, mother would be sorting her soiled laundry. I do not remember the order in which the washing process was done from start to finish but I do remember mother used bluing and Octagon bar soap (I don't remember how she dissolved the soap). When the water started to boil, mother would add whatever cleaning agents she needed (sometimes that included her homemade concoction of lye soap which she made from animal fat and wood ashes. If commercial bleach was around in those days I do not remember it.

END

01/12/2004
10:37PM
End of Installment Seven