Chores

Dear Diary,

Sunday may be the day of rest but I was thinking of chores this morning.  During my weekly visit with Dotty we talked about doing chores when we were young.  We both had grandparents living with us and, for the most part, they handled the daily chores.  Such an old fashioned word, chores.  Today we have the "To Do List"!

This photograph is of my brother mowing the small patch of grass around the clothes line.  Revolving clothes lines and push mowers are pretty old fashion too.  My dad handled the bulk of the mowing with his riding mower.  We kids loved to drive the little tractor around for fun and he indulged us.

One of my chores was to take the bottles and cans to the place on the back of the property where we deposited them.  Every house in the country had a can and bottle dump.  Two hundred years from now archaeologists will have a field day with it!  Boy did I hate doing it in the dark because I had forgot to do it that afternoon like I was supposed to!

We earned our allowance of 50 cents a week doing these chores but if we left a light on in our room we were "fined" 5 cents!  Dad was all about saving electricity!  Mainly I was charged with keeping my room tidy, a chore I was not all that good with to be truthful.  My grandmother handle most of the daily cooking chores and it was never a chore for me to help her when I was little.  Cooking always seemed a bit magical to me, all those things thrown in a bowl and delicious cookies appearing a while later!  Licking the spoon was my favorite chore!