Didn't have a maid until we moved down south and my mother had her 4th and 5th boys. Took 5 loads of laundry a day to keep up. This was pre-64 and she hired a mature black lady who had a blind husband and no children. Her name was Lela. She came 5 days a week, cooked, cleaned, and minded the preschool kids. Mom paid her $100 per month. which was about $1 per hour, while she managed a bowling alley during the day. When I went to work in a local filling station a few years later I made $.50 per hour. Lela stayed with us until the last two kids graduated from high school in the 70's. By then her husband had died and I was in the Army. My parents moved to a different state and one of my younger brothers stayed in town and he and his wife kept kept an eye on her after she retired and drew Social Security. She owned a little one bedroom "shotgun" house that was always clean and kept up, and she left it to my brother and his wife when she died. She had nieces and nephews in the city an hour away, but they never had much to do with her. She was part of our family. There was a lot right about the rural south back then. Not sure much of it has survived.
