71

A. Varesano interviewing Anna Timko
-16-
6/23/72
Tape 16-2

707 change over here. So you had to put a tub, and they'd wash in a tub. They'd
get down on their knees and strip themselves to the waist, you know, and
they'd wash themselves over here. And after, when they had the wash shanty,
well then it wasn't that already, because they left their clothes in the wash
shanty, and just bring them home to be washed, that's about all. But before,
everybody had to wash at home, because there was no other means. And dirt!
You know, I often used to laugh. This son of mine that I'm telling you about
that's forty-eight years old, he was about three years old, I think, at that
time. And when my brother was changing here - because he was married, I guess
in about 1926, 27, I guess, I don't know. He stayed with me then for two
years, before he was married. But this was already after he was married. And
he like to go play there where my brother would be washing, you know. He'd
sit there beside him, my brother was kneeling on the one side washing, and he'd
be on the other side, playing in the water! And he'd do something to my
brother, you know, and my brother would tell him, he said, Don't come up to
the garage, he says, you're not gonna get a ride! - He'd always go up in the
garage, get in the car, and down to the corner here he'd give him a ride!
Well, would he order him! He'd tell him right away, You take your clothes out
of our house, and you take your car out of our garage, and you don't have to
come and wash! He would lecture him! He says, Annie, he says, if I didn't
know better, I would think he used that from you! I said, Please! Because
730 he wasn't dumb then, either! He'd tell him right away, order him out!

AV: Well, how else did you preserve food beside smoking it? And the sauerkraut?

AT: There wasn't really too much of it. Even people didn't kow how to jar in
those days, too well. Food would spoil for them. They used to do like chow-
chow, or something like that, they would make and that would keep. But other
things they didn't know how to do. You know, as time went on, they tried it,
one would try it this way, another would try it that way, and then they'd tell
each other, and that's how they'd learn to preserve it then. But from the
beginning they didn't know how to do that. And they didn't even have time for
that stuff. Because there were boarders and families, and everything else,
where are you gonna get time to jar? It takes time with jarring. You have
to wash jars, and you have to get the food ready and yu have to cook it.
Well then, the gang would come, and they wouldn't have what to eat. And like
when they'd go in different shifts to work, well, I fuess not all of them had
so many men. It must have been I guess very few. I remember some that my
neighbor had, two boarders here, when I come to live here. She had two, but
that wasn't too bad. Well, they were paying her monthly, I don't know what
they were paying, I don't remember what they were paying. She said they were
747 paying her by the month, then already. So much a month.

AV: Well, did you ever clean house at all, in the old time?

AT: Well, the houses weren't like they are today. Understand, because it couldn't
be. How could one woman take care of everything, children, and boarders, and
to keep a clean house and everything else, what was impossible.

AV: They were small houses.

AT: Well, they were the same houses we have here now. But I mean it wasn't like
754 this, brcause it was just what the company had on there, that's all.

AV: You mentioned about white-washing. Who used to do it?

AT: The woman. The woman of the house. And she couldn't do it herself, she'd get
another woman to do it for her.

AV: How did they do that?

AT: Oh, there was lime, you'd buy lime, you had to dissolve it in water. It used
to come in like a rock form, like huge stones. You can't buy that kind, they
only have the powdered now. But in them days it used to come in pieces about