Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Did your mother have a "maid" when you were growing up?

We sometimes had Minute Maid in the freezer to make oj 🤷🏻‍♂️


You might as well asked did we have a yacht when I was growing up


But me I had a wonderful maid early in my biz career. Barbara was wonderful, cleaned my apt, did my wash and ironing Lordy but she was great.

But when my now wife became my si, she got rid of her. Lol I bet she regretted that !

Yep, things were always disappearing from our home, too, while we had the maid from Central America. An ivory statuette (about 9 inches tall) of Archangel Michael slaying Lucifer that was constantly on display in the living room when I was a kid (purchased in Italy in the 1960s) just up and disappeared. My mom's inherited gold pocket watch that was on display on the fireplace mantle up and disappeared. My dad lost a couple of expensive watches from his drawers. All while she was our maid. Most likely she stole them, but my mother loved her performance as a maid, so kept her on for decades.

I seemed to have went on a side track mentioning my grandparents’ house lady (mostly because that’s the only one I knew and was around)


As for my mom and dad, yes absolutely they had “the people” when they lived in Nairobi, Kenya.

My parents worked for the US Embassy, and had their own house/compound about 3 miles away.

They had gate guards out by the street.
Mom had a nanny for my infant sister (my sister was 18 yrs younger than me).
They had a house keeper too, her and the nanny talking back and forth is where my sister picked up some Swahili
There was a gardener to do up all the bushes, trees, picked up flower petals and figs off of the driveway.
Then there was also a yard/house maintenance guy, he actually did the mowing. Gardener guy was afraid of the mower or some chit.

My mother was sympathetic to all these people, like a fuggin shovel-ready grant. The embassy only supplied the gate guards.

All these staff people could be hired for about $10-20 a week. Which was tremendous to those individuals.
Mother let them have part of the yard to grow a shared garden, she ordered Burpee seeds through APO. They wouldn’t let the green beans mature, they picked the leaves as they grew and cooked those. lol

Mother requested I send any hunting boots, work boots I wore out over there for those staff people. Even went to Goodwill and got them boots to send over. A wore out pair of boots brought tears of gratefulness to their eyes.
They were sure sad when mom and dad moved back to the states.

I am 75 & the south was a different place in the 50's. Iwas basically raised by Pearl, mother played bridge every day. Every week day until I started high school, Pearl cooked fried pies for my breakfast.

I came from a farm family. My grandfather pretty much allowed a black family to live rent free in tenant homes. This was a area and time when better than half homes had no indoor toilet. Grandpa probably didn't pay them well but he kept them fed and warm through the winter. He also paid for medical care such as it was then. My father would go bail them out of jail if they didn't kill somebody.
The lady of the house would help grandmother in the house when they weren't in the field.
Then came the great society and soon all moved to town and learned how to scam the system. We automated as much as possible and hired local teenagers when they were out of school and cleaned house on our own.
I am thinking about hiring a cleaning service to help my wife, she works a fairly stressful job and could use some real help besides my halfassed efforts.

Yep. Exactly right.

I grew up in a era when most women did not work out of the home. There was too much work to do in the home. Fathers worked and provided for the family. Mothers birthed the children and nurtured them. Mothers maintained the home and kept it clean. This was before the time when most modern common labor saving devices existed. Devices such as gas or electric stoves, refrigerators, microweave ovens, and TV dinners. I bet there are lots of you who don't know what that is even though you eat the modern equivalent. This was before the time of clothes washers and clothes dryers, stay pressed clothes and modern fabrics. I can still remember the great hubub when my mother got a wringer washer. She didn't have to use the wash board as much, but she still had to dry the clothes on the clothes-line and iron most of them. This was before the time of electric vacuum cleaners. My mother used manual carpet sweeper.

We couldn't afford a maid and since my mother was a full time homemaker, we didn't need one. I write homemaker, not housewife. No woman is married to a house.

My wife worked a full time job out of the home most of the time, for four decades. The only time s that she didn't work out of the home was when she was breast feeding. So we did hire a cleaning lady who came to the house once a week to do the heavy cleaning jobs. The cleaning lady could do a weeks worth of laundry while she was cleaning the floors. My wife still prepared a meal for the entire family every night.

My daughter is an executive who works about 50 hours a week. She has blessed us with two grandchildren. She doesn't have a cleaning lady but the four of them eat out most evenings and everyone pitches to do the laundry and keep the house clean.

We are both retired now and we don't have a cleaning lady. We could afford one and as we are getting older, we are considering hiring some part time help, but haven't done it yet.

Mexican gals with them big brown eyes?

I'd have to hire two, maybe three...................but my wife wouldn't let me so I wouldn't bother to ask even.

Geno

That sir, is a proper cabin. And looks like one heck of a place to grow up too.

Geno