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

My grandmother’s housekeeper, she had three boys. Those black boys were close to my age (at the time +/- 2 yrs) and were my only ‘friends’ while stuck in Fla every summer away from my friends at home. She was allowed to bring them up to the farm for the whole week during VBS at the church.

They were extremely well behaved as I remember. Those boys had hundreds of Bible verses memorized.

Had a good time with them, lol

They thought they was hot stuff getting to chill with me and swim in the pool and hang out with 2 dobermans and not eat the fugg up. 😐

They old man had a Simca we used to rawhide that car through the cow pasture, those bobble heads bouncing all over inside that car hitting every gopher tortoise mound I could steer into 😃

Yes and she was like a 2nd mother to me.

Simca.............

Boy, haven't heard that one in a few years.

back in tha day we'd bomb around anywhere in anything!

Geno

He hauled feed out to the horses, carried rolls of fence and tools in it. It was a hatchback

It also seemed to have some tall wheels. Maybe 17-18” skinny tires. It had ground clearance for the fields and ditches and gopher mounds.

Old man didn’t own a pickup.

Had a big pimpin Mark III lincoln for ‘going to town’

No maid growing up but monthly cleaning folks on our own since the early eighties.

Nope ..mom and dad only had us slave's...

I grew up in 800sf log cabin. If you had a maid we are from different worlds entirely.

Bet that cabin looked like a proper cabin too, not like some of those places folks are calling "cabins" in the other thread.

Geno

25 years ago it wasnt so bad.

use to be a bikini made service here.

When my mom worked full time, we had ladies come from Juarez stay through the week to keep house for her. They worked cheap and were glad to have the opportunity. One in particular was with us for five or six years and was like a member of the family. We loved her.

One of the last ones we had would go in the kitchen every evening and whip up a dinner of tacos, chiles rellenos, and enchiladas almost every night. She was a wizard in the kitchen and made the best Mexican food I have ever had, but she had the personality of a fence post. I don't recall her ever addressing any of us by name, but damn, she could cook!

Mom and her Mom both had a maid. I had a nanny until I started Kindergarten. The maids came Tuesdays and Thursdays. My nanny came after breakfast a few mornings a week and would stay until I went down for my nap. That left Mom and Grandma time for shopping. My nanny was English. She split her time between 2-3 families. When she was around, I had an adult playmate.

The maids were a mixed bag. The longest tenure was held by Odell, a black woman who worked mostly for my Mom and retired shortly after I went off to college. I remember that the Hoover vacuum stopped working as soon as she left.
Another maid that lasted a while was Kate. She claimed to be of Lithuanian royalty. She did fine until she decided that she could boss my mother around. Mom told her to stick it somewhere. After that, the other Lithuanians vied for the positions. Mom had a Lithuanian maid until she went off to the Home. By this time, I think we were on the third generation.

My other grandma, Dad's mom, had maids. If I remember correctly Kate was one of them. None of them were live-ins. She had employed live-in servants when my Dad and uncles were growing up. This had been a large farm operation, and some of the servants had been distant family members who were brought over as refugees and worked on the farm until they got their feet on the ground. There were accommodations in the house proper and in the lofts of the barns. I know at least one cousin that became a VP at Procter and Gamble was conceived in one of those lofts.

By the time I came around, all that was gone. I think the maids were mostly Lithuanians. Eventually, they were replaced by Grandma's live-in escort about a year after she became widowed. He was named Peter, a swarthy Prussian about 20 years her junior. He was a bit of an inventor and a bit of a writer, but mostly he accompanied Grandma at social events and did the job of a house-husband. It was an unconsummated relationship, and I daresay I never saw any particular affection pass between them. It was all very Continental. There were odd relationships like that all through the gaggle of German ex-pats that hung with Grandma.

Mom and her mom were not idle by any stretch. The maids ran the vacuum, dusted, and did laundry. Mom and Grandma did all the rest. They did the shopping for the households, and they did the cooking and concentrated on certain parts of the chores that required extra skill. They also did all the cooking. I never saw either of them slacking off. What I did see was that our households were heads above those of my school and church friends. Clothes were cleaner and in better repair. The food was always the best. Cakes were scratch. There was always something for dessert.

My high school sweetheart lived on a farm, back in the 1970's when farming was still profitable. Her family did quite well. They employed a maid, a very friendly and polite black lady. We'd come in for lunch after working all morning in the field, and the maid would have an awesome lunch waiting for us. And the big, three-story farmhouse was always spotless. Man oh man, that was an eye-opening experience for me. Never knew that folks actually lived like that! We certainly didn't.

Damn straight!

Three sons!!

Yeah, me!

To clarify, ours is more cleaning lady than "maid" in the traditional sense. She comes in once a week and cleans our main floor rooms. She's here about 90 minutes each time, and she charges $50 a week. When I first gifted the service to Claudia, she was a high school principal and really had no time to clean - and was unsatisfied with the way I did it. The lady who owned the service came in, did a walk through and gave us an estimate of $40 a week. There initially were three or four different women who did it, because it is a high turnover business. The owner finally died of cancer, selling the firm to one of the maids. She is now an independent operator and has done our house now for I guess 10 years. Her rate went up to cover the high gas prices a while back, which I gladly agreed to. We've used the service now for going on 14 years.

I/we still clean our downstairs living area on our own - and admittedly don't do as good a job of it. BTW, I also decided a while back that mowing the yard was more than I cared to do any more. So I have a service do that, too. That's also a once a week thing, and they charge $35 a week. They trim, mow, and collect clippings in 20 minutes with two or three guys.

Either one is a worthy expense in my book.

If you put your kids in daycare and have a house cleaner, you are pretty close to having the equivalent of a maid. A maid in the house is more personal though.

My parents had a home grown work force of three between my siblings and I. We never got an allowance, we got (under) paid for the work we did, and there was never a shortage of it. Summer vacation was not much of a vacation at all. Every morning when we got up there would be a list on the kitchen table. If we got right to it, all the tasks on that list could be accomplished by early afternoon and the balance of the day was our "vacation" time. Sometimes the list wasn't finished by the time Mom and Dad got home from work, never a good thing.

Me and my brothers felt like maids, landscapers, chefs, and dishwashers....Taught us a lot on how to take care of oneself and a home...

I know a few guys who can’t cook for shît or do a dish. Can’t hide much at hunting camp. 😎

Yep, we had one for awhile when I was growing up. I guess around 1967 or so my parents went to Mexico and came back with 2 sisters. One took care of our home and the sister took care of a friends home. It wasn't long before my mother's jewelry started disappearing. I don't know what happened to her.