Saturday night baths

My sister wanted me to clarify about this when I start this BLOG on this topic that we were not dirty, and it might seem so when you start to read this. We were scrubbed when we were little on a daily basis by our mother, but ...

When I was growing up, until 1952, there was no sewer system in our town, and the only way to get rid of household waste was to it to go into a cesspool. Our yard had two cesspools -- one for the house, one for the church. And these "pools" would periodically become full to overflowing, actually, not literally, and would have to be emptied.

A truck would pull into the yard and pump out the waste that was in the cesspool and we were good to go again. And boy did that process stink.

So, because we had to be careful of our waste water, because emptying a cesspool was expensive, we were only permitted one bath per week -- and that bath was on Saturday night. During the week we had what my mom (the former nurse) liked to call "sponge" baths. Hah! They were with scratchy washcloths, not soft sponges, and the water was usually cold, not tepid or warm. But we were washed (sponged) every day.

Oh, yeah, when we took that weekly bath, we were only allowed two inches of water in the tub -- now, I like to have a tub that has water in it almost to the top, but at that time it just wasn't permitted.

I must say that after the town sewer system was up and working, all that changed and we were allowed to take as many baths as we wished.

We never had a shower, by the way. There was a hose with a shower head on it attached to the faucet and in that way we could wash our hair and hose down after the bath water became soap scummy.

I can't remember the last time I took a bath. In our "retirement" home we have a big, big tub and I've only taken two baths in it -- I prefer to shower. But if I wanted to take a bath in that "garden tub" I could fill it almost to the top -- almost, I say, because if I filled it to the rim when I got in, it would overflow and cause lots of water damage to our bathroom. I think that has something to do with Archimedes principle, doesn't it?

Now, my father didn't only take a Saturday night bath. It seems to me that every morning he took his good old time in the bathroom, washing/bathing/steaming up the bathroom, while we children waited to go "potty" and waited in pain until he was ready to give up his place in the bathroom. He would exit the bathroom smelling like a freshly shaved and bathed person wearing his briefs and undershirt, move the three steps from the bathroom door to his bedroom and get dressed. Strange the things one remembers.