Mrs. Addie's Bath

Some of my Kentucky memories fail to be forgotten back here in Missouri where I was born. When I tell the story about Mrs. Addie’s bath people can’t believe me.

The old folks (my mother- and father-in-law) had spent the night visiting and had slept in a bed where others had slept. She had caught the itch. (That’s what doctors call scabies.) I explained to Mrs. Addie that she would have to take baths and sterilize her clothing and bedding.

I carried water from up on the hill, heated it in big black kettle over the fireplace and poured it into a washtub by the fire. Beside it were clean clothes and soap. Out in the cold kitchen with my baby, I waited and waited.

Beginning to get cold I cracked the door and asked if she was about through. “Well, come on in Child,” she said. I went in and she was yet in the tub, but with her old dirty under clothes!

I explained that she should have put the dirty clothes into the kettle to boil and kill the germs. She cried, “But I’ve not been naked since the day I was born!”

I was dumbfounded. I wrapped her in her dirty bed sheet and started over. I even had to wash and scald the tub to have a new start and she thought I was goofy.

Those were the days before antibiotics. I was glad her homemade soap killed germs – or perhaps it was the boiling water.