Each person had a job to do in the house.
Mom went back to work as a seamstress specialising in
beadwork.
Aunty Maureen worked in an office, I think.
Uncle Bill was a blacksmith and had to leave very early to
catch a train to his work. His job was to stoke the fire in the kitchen, which warmed
water in the geyser for the rest of the family. He also stoked the fire in the
stove so that it was ready for breakfast.
Uncle Len and Uncle Doug were in charge of the floor. I
remember Uncle Len had a lovely system. He would slip his foot in the strap of
the polishing brush, sit on a chair, or the couch, and rotate his foot with the
brush.
I can’t remember what Ken and Bob did. They were the youngest
of the boys, so they probably had a lighter workload. The girls, I think,
generally helped in the kitchen. My job was dusting in the lounge. I know that
Joan was my official babysitter.
Ma was in charge of the kitchen. My fondest memories of her
are her sitting at the kitchen table. I remember a lot of us sitting around the
table helping to prepare the veggies. My worst job was shelling peas. Remember,
this was before frozen veggies became the thing. When you picked up a pea in its
shell, you had no idea what was ensconced inside. You would crack the pea by holding
it by the “seams” and squeezing until it popped open. Then you would scoop the
peas out with your thumbnail. All too often, that thumbnail would scoop up a juicy,
fat green worm. You learned to look before scooping. This brought up a distaste
for shelling peas. So glad to have the frozen ones now. But sitting around the
table with other family members brought on a lovely sense of family. Ma would
often have to reprimand us for sneaking those sweet morsels into our mouths. She
would say, “whistle while you work”, then she would know we are giving up all
the peas for the family dinner.
I have a vague memory of an ice box, but I also remember
stocks being bought in on an almost daily basis. I loved the spectacle of the
Indian guy bringing his horse and cart full of veggies and fruit while his
horse left a steaming reminder of the visit. In watermelon season, Ma would
issue instructions to have a tiny triangle cut into the watermelon to check for
the white. There had to be a thick piece of white for her konfyt.
(Interestingly, I have just learnt that we throw away a valuable piece of the
watermelon as the white has some amazing properties)
Ma was also in charge of the washing machine, which was
housed on the first landing by the bathroom. With sixteen people in that house,
washing was probably a daily task. The machine was a big barrel standing on
four legs. I think it was filled via a hosepipe. I’m not sure where the water
went afterwards, maybe through the window to the garden below, or maybe pumped
into the bath. Straddled across the top of the machine was the wringer. I loved
to watch pillowcases threaded through with the open end first. As the pillow
case moved through the manually operated wringer, a bulge developed, which got
bigger and bigger while it held water and air as the pillow case moved through the
wringer. Oh! The delight when the bulge entered the wringer and air and water
exploded with a satisfying pop.
