Industrious

 More from the life of my great-grandmother, Dana Gage Humphrey . . .

 A hard rain last night.  They washed a 3 week wash.  Lizzie told me she has to work too hard with me here.—October 5, 1942

 

            The word that comes to mind when I remember Tulsa is hot.  There were so many insufferable hot days.  Why, in ’35 and ’36 there were spells of 100+ degree days, one right after another.  Once it got up to 114 degrees.  How we suffered in the heat.  We even slept outside.

            But heat or no heat, I never stopped being useful.  Lizzie and I put up quarts of produce.  We picked and shelled pecans.  They’d catch fish to feast upon.  I helped clean up the rentals—my, Henry was industrious with his rentals.  We would rent out one house after another, even rooms in Lizzie and Henry’s house.  I’d move from one bedroom to the next, and Henry finally made me a wardrobe to keep my things right in the living room when the beds were all filled.  There was a time, though, near Christmas of ’36 when five of the houses were vacant.  Things did not look very bright.

            And, oh, the long days sitting in one rental or the other in case someone stopped by to rent.  I always had my crochet and needlework in hand.  In those years, I would sew dresses for my grandchildren, crochet dresser scarves and doilies and tablecloths for presents, and make quilts.  Ah, yes, the two quilts for Alene and Dana—3,380 blocks and 101,900 quilt stitches.  In 1936 or so, I cut up a black jacket I had bought in 1900 to use for sewing.  Lizzie and I had a moneymaker once selling crocheted gloves.  Industrious I’ve always been.

            Once I retired, I lived the most with Lizzie and Henry there in the ‘30s, punctuated by visits to Helena, Montana with son Gage and his wife May—and their ever-growing brood of children.  (Sometimes I thought having so many children was scandalous, but I never said a word to May about it.)  Of course, I also spent plenty of time with daughter Dana and her husband George in southwestern Michigan.  My visits to son John and his wife Alene in Chicago were always brief—it was hard to get along with Alene.  My longest stretch in Tulsa, though, was the end of 1934 right up to March 1938.