DUMPSTER DIVING MAMA

My Mom, widowed at the age of fifty-two, spent ten years working as a maid at the Shore Lodge Motel in McCall, Idaho.  She took this job after my father’s death in 1961 to supplement her small income from leased property.  Mom, always a housewife, had never worked outside the home.  She took the only job available that she felt capable of doing, cleaning toilets and making beds for people who expected to be waited on and left huge messes for the maids to clean up.  She hated it, but she made two very good friends in the process.  Lydia and Ivy used their sense of humor to turn the mundane tasks into a challenge and entertained each other with family stories. Sometimes they played practical jokes on each other and other staff members to help pass the time.  Occasionally they lunched together or spent a day shopping as a social outing.

 Mom missed Daddy terribly, but she, a strong determined woman, continued improving their new home.  During long winter evenings, wind blew and snow drifted until her driveway clogged and she was housebound. She braided rugs, made from thrift shop wool coats. These coats had outlived their usefulness and were discarded by their previous owners. After washing and drying the coats, she ripped out the seams and cut the fabric into strips and braided the strips into rugs. Now this wool cloth brought warmth, color and comfort to her life, as the coat had brought to its previous owner. Summertime, she added more flowerbeds to the new yard, and tilled, planted, weeded and harvested her vegetable garden.  Then she preserved food as she always had, first lining up row after row of jars on the kitchen table where she admired them before carrying them downstairs, to fill the cellar shelves for winter. To be continued...Hugs to All...OWAV:) 

We have few photos of

Mom, she was alway 

behine the camera

instead of in front of it.