Mom Speaks on What Sold at Auction

Christina Holzhauser

Old Ringer Washing Machine

When I was in high school, I made alotta my clothes because I took Home-Ec, so I made stuff. Far as I know, they was hand me downs. I really don’t know where we got our clothes; we just had em.

Mom warshed clothes while we was in school in a ol’ ringer with a tub of water. We used to always have to get water outta the well.

Cream Cans

If we didn’t have water in the cistern, we’d drive down to the Hampton’s farm. We’d take down cans and fill ‘em up. It was down below the hill. Start back up where the pig pen was and the pond. A road went left with a gate. I dunno how far you go down in there. That’s where the Hamptons lived. There’s a big ol’ field. Pop used to plow it. He brought up the water for us to drink and stuff. He used to draw it out of the well there at Hampton’s. He’d bring them cans up to the house and we’d dip water out of it to drink and cook and stuff. We always went by their road to get to the school bus.

Metal Tub

There’s a metal warshtub Mom’d put behind the stove, and that’s where we took our baths—behind the stove. I don’t know how we made it, but we did.

Cookstove

She raised us on an old cook stove. In the side was a reservoir where she kept water. Warm water. It was green. It had a pedestal thing that came out on the side. Like where you could put your feet up. I thought it was pretty up-town. And she didn’t get that electric cook stove ‘til we were married. We have pictures of her getting it for Christmas one year. I got that picture. She was looking down, had her head down looking at the oven. I’ll never forget. She was proud of it cause all she ever had was the ol’ cookstove in the kitchen

We had, you know, stuff to eat. We had eggs, lotsa eggs. Used to have fried bread, prolly what you’d call pancakes. Mom always made homemade bread and vegetable soup. And then, of course, they butchered.

Big Barrels

After they killed the hog they’d dip ‘em in the scalding water. Helen told me Mom was scalding chickens and I musta come runnin’ around the house and fell in the scalding water. I wish I’d wrote it down. I musta got scalded pretty bad. I don’t remember, though.

We used to Walk the Barrel. That was fun. We’d walk it all the way around the yard. We were real good at it. We played Annie-Over a lot. You know, we’d throw a ball over the roof of the house and have the others try to catch it on the other side. We played Crack the Whip. We used to make dirt piles and hide a rock in it. If you guessed what pile it was, you got to make a pile. Growing up there, we played in the dirt. Because, you know, we was all the way up there, and that’s what we had. That’s all we had.

Accordion

If us kids wanted stuff, Pop would go out and cut logs, cut stay bolts, logs, that kinda thing. That’s how he got our accordion because we wanted to take accordion lessons. Judy, me, and Donna. So he went out and cut logs and stuff and that’s how we got stuff. That’s how they’d buy things for us kids. I wished I woulda bid on that accordion during the sale.

Wooden Ironing Board

It’s solid wood. It’s greenish. It was green, I guess, at one time.  And there’s this burnt hole in the wood where she set the iron a lot. She shoulda set it up, but, I was little, I don’t know how she set it. But it’s got a burnt spot where she left it set. Well, I can remember Mom usin’ it the whole time we growed—the whole time we grew—up. Mom ironed clothes on that thing. I remember that. I can remember when I was younger she had an old iron that used to set on the stove and get it hot. I have that ironing board because whoever bid on it took the stuff on top of it but left the ironing board, but none of us kids wanted it, and I said, “I’m not throwing it away because it was Mom’s.”  I need to do something with it. Put it downstairs and make it pretty because…it was theirs. I have it upstairs, in the antique room.

And then that radio. I’m bringin’ it down, too. She only gave ten dollars for it. Bought it from the Hamptons below Mom and them on that farm. She bought that from them. For me. Pop went out an’ cut logs for it. For me.

We used to listen to the radio just like that; Mom and them had one. I dunno what they called that kinda radio, but we used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. And it still works, it’s just that it’s so old that the plug-in has come unwired. It just needs a new plug-in. If we bring it downstairs, we can play it. Nobody sees it up there. I’m gonna bring that stuff down, from upstairs. So people see it. Because it was theirs.

© 2019 Christina Holzhauser

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Christina lives with her partner and their two kids in Columbia, Missouri, where she plays and coaches rugby. She grew up in a town of 85 people on the Missouri River, but ventured out to earn a B.S. in Anthropology from the University of Houston and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Her most recent work can be found in the journal Wraparound South and the anthology, Crooked Letter i: Coming out in the South.

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