A Boy Named Virgil, Part 7: Collecting Water and Other Small Boy Chores
Tales from a Small Village in Southern Illinois Circa 1900
A Boy Named Virgil is the first-person account of Virgil Bravard Browne, based on a letter he wrote to his niece, Marcia Moore Sagebiel, in 1958. The story is edited and read by me, his grandnephew. Read the introduction.
At the back of my grandfather’s house was the well. It was about 12 feet deep and ordinarily had about five feet of water, which was fed by a water “vein.” It now seems to me that I have never partook of a more satisfying drink, as the water was soft and very cool.
The well was lined with soft bricks and moss growing on the walls, which in this age might not seem sanitary. But since all old wells had moss there was no thought about it, and no effort was made to remove it.
The well was equipped with a chain and sprocket pump. If the small boy (whose unhappy lot it was to keep the kitchen water bucket full) in a moment of bad temper turned the crank too rapidly, the chain would jump the sprockets and would have to be replaced by removing the hood atop the pump box.
“My grandparents’ home became a permanent home for me.”
— A BOY NAMED VIRGIL, PART 1
We also had a cistern that held about 400 gallons. It had a bottleneck at the top through which the water was drawn with a bucket fastened to a rope and over an iron pulley suspended from a cross piece built on the box above the cistern. The box’s lid was kept closed so the innumerable cats and kittens common to most families of that time would not fall in and necessitate the cistern being bailed out and scrubbed.
The cistern was filled by the flow of water and melted snow from the roof on the north side of the house and conveyed by means of a V wooden trough and a hole in the top of the wooden housing atop it, which it fitted neatly.
This water, being softer than the well water, was used for washing and mopping since it was not particularly tasty. But it was very good when used for laundry work with the yellow soft soap, which was also made at home from pork fat and lye derived from pouring water through wood ashes carefully stored during the winter months.
This was done by an ash hopper with v-type construction. The lower boards were seated in a small log hollowed out and open on one end to allow the liquid lye to run into a wooden bucket placed in a small pit beneath it.
This also was the small boy’s job.
He would pour four or five buckets of water over the ashes, place the bucket in the pit, and the water would seep through the ashes. When it was full, he would pour it back on the ashes again to gather more strength. This would go on for days until the liquid lye would have sufficient strength, according to the judgment of elders by some test that I am unable to recall.
Soap making was done in a cast iron kettle by boiling the fat from butchering time, carefully skimming the smelly matter that came to the top, stirring almost constantly, and seeing that the fire was not too hot or too cold, a task in itself as this entire operation was done outdoors.
This also was a small boy’s chore, and he felt badly abused, for the weather was pretty cold as this was usually a springtime activity. While his knees were being scorched, his backside was freezing.
When at long last everything was just right, one of your elders would add the lye that you had so painfully manufactured from water and ashes, and sometimes they would add a real store boughten1 can of Lewis Lye to give greater strength. This last part of the almost ritual was not for kids, who would probably spill the lye and get burned from it, besides wasting it.
After the lye was added, it was again stirred until it had reached the consistency of medium-cooked mush and then was allowed to cool before being stored in wooden kegs. This was our family’s way, while others boiled it down until it could be cut up into crude bars of a mild hardness.
This also was a small boy’s chore, and he felt badly abused, for the weather was pretty cold as this was usually a springtime activity. While his knees were being scorched, his backside was freezing.
This soap no doubt was hard on clothes and also hands, but the clothes of that day must have been of sturdier material than of today, for it seemed to last about as well, and the hands of those who used it seemed to suffer little loss of beauty.
“Dishpan hands” was yet to come to the notice of the ladies. If their hands were rough and red, it was a badge of an industrious housewife, something to be proud of rather than ashamed.
Sheep tallow was about the only known hand lotion at the time. Men used it as well as the ladies during corn-shucking time, when their hands would crack from the damp ears of corn picked in the early hours of the morning.
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“Boughten” is indeed a word, meaning the opposite of homemade (Merriam-Webster).
In the CT town where I live, children are given few to no chores. My son had a few tasks assigned to him, but fewer than I did, and far fewer than my mother did at the same age.
When I was growing up, we had a giant humidifier in the hallway of the second floor of our house. One of my small jobs was to keep it full of water in the winter months. I remember toting the gallon jug back and forth from the bathroom (about six steps!) and telling my parents that they only had children because they needed slaves to do their housework. After orthodontia, two college educations, and 18+ years of feeding and clothing us, quite the scam they came up with.
Soap made from pork fat? So much hard work back then.