In Dearborn, Michigan, our Mom Josephine had a good friend about three houses down the street, who also liked to play Bingo, so they would often go to Bingo together. They had known each other quite a few years already.
Mom was suffering from colon cancer. She had three surgeries for it, each two years apart. I was with her for long periods, several times, as caretaker. Her second surgery was in late July of 1992, and I was with her. It was then August 13th, and she was beginning to feel somewhat better.
Alberta, Mom's friend, came by that evening for a visit. She brought Mom some studzenina, which is jellied pigs’ feet, and two peanut butter cookies. She liked coming over once in a while, to check on Mom, to see how she was doing. They would exchange news, and talk for a while. The three of us began reminiscing about something, and soon little tales and anecdotes filled the room.
Alberta told us stories of her youth in a Pennsylvania coal town. She picked coal, carried it home in bags, on her shoulder. The Breaker Boys, some as young as eight or nine years old, worked on conveyor belts in the breaker, picking out pieces of rock. They would sometimes drop or throw coal into piles on the ground and the people or children would pick it up and put it in bags, and carry it home. Alberta's brother would load a wheelbarrow with the coal, take it home and unload it, and she’d make three trips to his one.
Her father put a shower in their home in the basement. It was the only home around, with a shower. About ten kids from the neighborhood would line up with towel and soap on a Saturday morning to take a shower. Her mother would keep the fire going in the stove to heat the water. The last person would take a shower in cold or cool water.
They had the biggest house in Forbes Road, Pennsylvania, some distance east of Pittsburgh. Alberta knows where Fayette City is, where Joe, my Mom's husband, our Dad, was born. Fayette City is southeast of Pittsburgh. It seems that Forbes Road was somewhat farther east of Pittsburgh than Fayette City.
She was then thirteen years old – her relatives had a roadhouse and she would go there to work in the summer. She would move a hundred empty cases for soda or drinks, in the basement from one side to the other, fill them with the soda bottles, and carry them back to the other side. It was very hard work, especially for youngsters.
She would also do laundry, with a wringer washer. One day she was bent over the tub with clothes to put in the wringer, and her long hair got caught in the wringer, and she had to pull her hair out little by little because no one was around to help her. For a long time after, she had a place on top of her head where hair wouldn’t grow well.
At the end of summer, her mother would get a bushel or two of peaches as pay from these people, for Alberta’s work. Times were very tough then, in the 1920s and 1930s, even into the 1940s.
I'll see you at the Corner Post...
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