Women in the Kitchen - The 50'S & 60'S

    When we were growing up in the 50's and 60's, one of the primary jobs of our mothers was food preparation.  On the wheat farm in North Dakota where Gail was raised, a full breakfast was prepared every morning, plus a hot lunch and dinner for family and farm hands, often relatives.  At Byron's home in the state of Washington, it was a similar scene:  hot breakfast, lunch, and dinner for seven.   Plus there was a lot of baking, particularly in Gail's Scandinavian home.   That amount of cooking involves an incredible amount of work, as you well know.   The interesting thing is that our mothers did this day after day using inferior equipment.  There were no forged knives or commercial quality pans.  In the early years, Gail's mother even labored over a wood burning stove!

    While the women labored in the kitchen with substandard equipment, the men did not.   They had the best tools they could afford, often Craftsman, guaranteed for life.   There were the typical tools - hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, and so forth, but also the more unusual ones:  rip saws, pipe cutters, hole diggers, concrete chisels - you name it.  Often a particular tool was used only once a year; some not even that often.

    The contrast between kitchen and tool shed was incredible, but never questioned.  It did not matter that the women used their tools three to four times a day.  Proper equipment for the kitchen was, supposedly, unaffordable.  Women should make do with what they had, even though the best use for the equipment was as musical instruments, the pots being drums, the wooden spoons serving as drum sticks, and the lids as cymbals.

    Thanks be to God that the situation has changed in many homes!  A Cook's Wares is glad to have been part of the change.  However, many women still labor without proper equipment.  If we ran for president, our campaign slogan would be:  A Good Pot for the Chicken in Every Home!