By Wally WachterRetired Herald Managing Editor
SOMETIMES WHEN we stop to ponder the past, we wonder how grocery stores ever survived back when we were young. MOST of the everyday staples that appear on today's dinner tables were homemade concoctions in our day. Washday products also were home-produced. Paper items like toilet tissues and napkins were makeshift things.
Frugal mothers who had to make the meager earnings of fathers stretch from payday to payday were the main devisers.
Two or three times a week they baked bread. It was nothing for them to bake six or eight loaves at a time. Sometimes, the extra dough was shaped into little balls and placed in flat pie pans, the end result being pull-apart rolls whose life span in a hungry household was just a few minutes.
The aroma of fresh-baked bread would drive the family wild. Everyone had to be there to get some piping hot from the oven. There usually was a hassle over who would get the crusted heels.
In many households the butter was freshly made in wooden churns. It took time and muscle to turn the fat from the milk into the rich yellow spread.
The oleomargarine you bought in stores in those days was a poor substitute for the fresh butter. Unlike today's brands which make it hard to distinguish, either by appearance or taste, from the ``real spread,'' oleo was white, and each package contained a capsule with a red substance which you could hand-mix into the spread to give it the appearance of butter. The taste was oily and distinctive.
There were no strict zoning restrictions like we have today to preserve the dignity of neighborhoods. Many homeowners raised chickens, ducks and geese which provided eggs for the breakfast tables. When the fowl outlived their usefulness, they became the Sunday dinners.
The hot cereals on the breakfast tables usually were something cooked from farina, oatmeal or cornmeal.
Some folks with larger back yards even raised pigs. These, when fattened, were slaughtered, butchered and preserved in salt. Some of the meat was ground into sausage.
The fat from the pork also had its purposes. It was melted down into lard which was used by women in cooking and baking the goodies for which today's recipes demand sophisticated store-bought shortenings.
Then, too, rendered fat was combined with a quantity of lye _ I never did learn the formula _ to produce homemade soap. The mixture was poured into large cake pans and allowed to set. It was then cut into bars for home use. The soap was not as fancy smelling as today's commercial brands, nor did it contain hand lotion. But it did a fine job of washing grease and grime off dirty hands and faces. Sometimes when the formula was too strong, some of the skin came off with the dirt.
The homemade soap was flaked with a sharp knife into chips which were used to launder clothes. Stores in those days did not have the fancy detergents that the shelves are lined with today. They did sell soap chips which were scooped out of burlap sacks into regular paper bags and weighed according to your needs.
And paper products? There are many humorous references to the old Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogs that were standard supplies in many outdoor facilities. I cannot dispute that there is basis for the look-back humor. Tissue paper, such as that which wrapped each orange and lemon on the stores' produce shelves, was a collectors' item for many. It's intended use was obvious.
Handkerchiefs, which ranged from large red and blue bandannas to tiny lace-trimmed squares for ladies, served the purpose of today's facial tissues of various colors and scents. Women would buy simple square white handkerchiefs and tat their own lace around the edges to make them elegant. When the old hankies got into the starched laundry by mistake, it provided red noses which today's tissue makers could have a field day with in their television commercials.
There are many, many things in the stores today that have made our lives easier. And a walk through the bakery departments of most giant markets cannot help arouse hunger through the aromas they create.
But nothing can ever match the smell of home-baked bread after a hard day at school or a grueling play session in the alley.