Keeping cool with water and no electricity…

Already had to take two baths and it ain’t noon yet. First one was from washing the house eaves and fascia. No power washer, just a Charlie washer.

Actually, I could have simply dried off after that because I was soaking wet. Anyhow some soap didn’t hurt anything.

After that I put on my cleanest dirty blue jean shorts and fired up the gas weed eater. Went all around the house, the shed, back fence and back again. My legs and shorts were covered in splatters of grass. I closed the garage door and got out of the dirty shorts and shirt and hit the showers again.

One cain’t come in the house being that dirty and covered with grass clippings; it ain’t worth it to get the Mrs. all fired up by doing so.

Besides, she ain’t here and I’m the one that would have to clean up the mess.

The Mrs. is above the Mason Dixon Line this week between Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Lancaster County (Amish Country). I’ll be making that trip later on during the year. I drove there last year and would not mind doing it again but the Mrs. ain’t too pleased with that thought. Driving adds four days to my short vacation time as its two days up and two days back; it’s worth it to me to see more of this country.

Do enjoy going to Amish Country and seeing all of that. Even I like to shop there. A most conservative way of life, however, I’m sold on electricity.

A lady friend was telling me of a spring house her grandmother had and how she utilized it to store milk, butter and eggs. It was a small, four walled-building with the roof built over a stream. Water coming from a ground spring was cold water and the room was generally 20 – 30 degrees cooler than outside.

I too have used a stream to keep my drinks cool but that was a long time ago. It works well with watermelons too.

Back as a chap I would go down close to the river with my grandpa, we’d cross a bridge and he would stop the wagon. Walk around a cane break and down to a stream covered with branches and bushes to filter the sunlight out. It was cooler in the little opening and we used the snuff glass kept upside down on a stick to get a drink.

That old wagon was one rough ride as I recall. Steel wheels and one felt every rock in the road. I’d sit on the back and of course back then I did not have much cushioning, ’nuff said.

Take a bath at night meant washing on the back porch or out in the yard under the Mimosa tree with a bar of Lifebuoy soap. They had Octagon soap too.

On the back porch was a shelf with a large hole on one end cut out to hold a bowl. Didn’t need hot water in the summer except for cooking and canning.