Volume 7, Number 7 - Spring 1981
A Visit to Uncle Tom's Farm
by Irene Davis Milton
My mother was Laura Welch Davis, a sister of T.R. Welch, Lucille Brown’s father. I often went to their place and stayed all night with my cousins, Lucille and Mary.
One time Aunt Annie was getting ready to do the family laundry. She sent Uncle Tom to the store for laundry soap. Like a man, Uncle Tom just took any old soap. When Aunt Annie started to wash she looked in the sack and to her horror it contained a bar of Rub-No-More, a stinky, yellow product that smelled terrible. Aunt Annie used nothing but P&G which was a nice, white, clean-smelling soap.
Aunt Annie sent we three girls to exchange the soap. Lucille was about 8 or 9, I was about 7 and Mary about 3 years old. We had to walk from the farm to Spokane. Lucille and I thought that we were quite big girls and didn’t want little Mary tagging along with us, but Mary had to go. It was warm weather and a long walk for a child a little as Mary. When we got to Spokane Mary was very tired. While Lucille was exchanging the soap Mary climbed upon a keg of nails to take a much needed rest. There were nails driven all around the top of the keg. I suppose the nails had held the lid on. Mary was so tiny her bottom slid down in the keg and the nails sticking inside caught in Mary’s clothes. We couldn’t get her out! The man at the store had to get his pincers and pull out the nails before we could get Mary out. Lucille and I thought we had been disgraced and would hardly claim Mary on the way home.
We stopped at Aunt Martha Wade’s place on the way to get some country butter that she made and sold.
There were many episodes that happened on my visits to the Welch home. We still get together now and then to reminisce about out happy times of a long time ago.
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