I can't remember where I first saw Caroline: Little House Revisited Sarah Miller mentioned, but as soon as did I wanted to get my hands on a copy. After the first few pages, I was absolutely hooked.
The book covers the events of the original Little House on the Prairie so you probably already know the story. What's different here is the perspective and the details.If you've ever wondered how women managed to care for their children in covered wagons or on homesteads, this book provides a window into those days...but somehow skips the diapers. (Seriously, how did mothers manage in the days before running water and electric dryers?)
There is a scene near the end of the book that left me very uncomfortable. It's handled delicately, but I didn't need or want a glimpse into the bedroom of Caroline and Charles Ingalls. In any other book, I wouldn't have minded it, but it felt like the author went farther than she needed to and that the book would have been better without that part.
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Whenever I complained about dirty cloth diapers my mother reminded me that when my brother was born she and dad lived on a farm in Kansas with no running water, no indoor plumbing. She also only had a dozen diapers. She would have a bucket on the back porch that she would put the diapers in. She would dump the soiled diapers at the time she changed him and at some point during the day she would heat water and wash them out, by hand. She would then hang them to dry. They had a ringer washing machine but she only used it once a week when she would do all the laundry. It always put my kids diapers in perspective. I had 60 cloth diapers and would rinse the poopy ones out in the toilet and do a load every few days.
By the way, after they moved to Oregon we still had a ringer washing machine until sometime in the 60's. I can't remember exactly what year. I doubt it was the same one since it would have been to expensive to move it from Kansas. We had gotten a dryer a few years before but my parents could not afford both at the same time. Prior to that we had to hang the clothes to dry. Outside in the summer, in the garage in the winter. That garage never saw a car that I remember. It was converted to new living space when I was 8 so that I could have my own room and would no longer have to share with my brother. They also added a laundry room, that is probably when we got the dryer. Although I remember wooden racks in the laundry area.
I appreciate and am thankful for running water, indoor plumbing and a state of the art washer and dryer. I remember how wet I would get helping mom with the laundry when we would ring out the clothes.
And mom would tell stories of growing up in Montana and everyone using the same bath water every week. No Thank you! I love my clean hot water way to much.
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