9798985094213epub by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-26T21:52:28+00:00

Chapter twenty-four

TO KILL THE GOOSE

After we had consumed the potatoes, father had brought back from his trip, we were totally out again. Being without potatoes is for a German like being out of rice for an Asian.

A total of six families lived in our three-story house. The large basement was divided by wooden slats into six compartments, one for each family. The slats were spaced about 2 inches apart, to allow for air circulation. The separate basement compartments for each family were used to store food, coal for the stove, potatoes, and other items.

The largest common room was the separate laundry, which held six portable metal bathtubs, and six hand-operated wooden tub washing machines, each with a wringer mounted on the hinged lid on top. In the corner of that room sat a built-in wood or coal fired stove for heating the water for the laundry. The bathtubs were stored in the basement for their once weekly use, when each had to be carried upstairs to an apartment for the Friday evening hot bath. Each apartment had a single cold-water faucet in the kitchen. One obtained hot water by heating cold water in a large container on the kitchen stove.

Each family had the use of the laundry room for one week, in rotation, once every six weeks. The wet clean laundry would be carried in a basket up five floors to the attic, where clotheslines had been strung. It often took close to one week for the laundry to dry when the weather was cold. In the winter, the clean washed clothing would often be frozen stiff, so that one could break a frozen shirt in half. If one needed an item which was wet or frozen one would take it off the line and dry it in the apartment. Doing laundry in the basement during cold winter days would create such a dense fog from the hot water, there was zero visibility. We had to shout to communicate with each other.

Home canned food in glass jars was stored on shelves. Piles of coal for cooking and heating were kept in open bins, potatoes in wooden crates. After the September potato harvest each family would store several hundred pounds of potatoes in crates for the winter months.

Well, we were out of potatoes again, after we had consumed Father’s prize.

One day Mother came up from the basement producing a large potato from her apron. “Look what I found in front of our basement gate!” she said.

The three of us looked at the beautiful large potato. “It was just lying there, right outside our gate,” she said. We could not believe it.

Who had dropped it? Should we ask the other tenants if they perhaps dropped a potato?

Mother said “No, not a good idea. We would have to give it back. But now we have a potato.” We agreed. We greatly enjoyed eating that potato.

A few days later another big potato lay in front of our gate. Mother picked it up and brought it upstairs.

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