Thursday, December 09, 2010

One more dishpan post

In my last post I wrote about my grandmother's old dishpan and showed a picture I believe was taken in the mid-1950s.  Marion commented, "Do you know, I had a big old dishpan just like that. My first husband and I had a cabin on the ocean and when we were there, I would bathe my young children in it."

That comment made me remember seeing an old picture of a baby sitting outside in some kind of tub, so this morning I hunted up the picture and looked at it again.


Yep, it's the same dishpan.  And that cute, chubby baby in it?  That's my mother, who was born in 1923.

Things were made to last back then.

10 comments:

  1. That is such a lovely photo! I have discovered several of my parents in their early marriage... odd sized photos, 2" x 2", etc., and so lovely in their silvery images.

    Also, that Butch photo? Give him a good rub for me because he is too precious!

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  2. Alison, aren't old photos wonderful to have? And I find the odd sizes helpful when it comes to sorting them out and identifying the people, places, and dates associated with them.

    Butch will appreciate the extra rub, thank you.

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  3. Love that pic. I remember bathing in my mom's dishpan. BTW, My mom was also born in 23!

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  4. Isn't that something! How adorable it was to bathe my babies in that tub...I have a photo of one of my daughters sitting in it, just like this one! How very neat to find out how old that wash tub was!

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  5. You can do so much with a dish pan even today. I remember Mom cooking peaches in a dish pan. You really had to stir to keep them from scorching. Sort of sound gross...wash dirty dishes in it and cook in it too, but we did. We had a little foot dish pan for washing our face and then our feet...in that order. Did you all use one of those? Nothing was plastic back then and your used it on and on and then made a flower pot out of it!

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  6. Holly, knowing that your mom and mine were born in the same year and that your mom is still a vital, active woman makes me realize how many good years I've missed with my mother because she died so young. Sad.

    Marion, thanks for your comment that reminded me of this picture.

    Sister-Three, my theory is that the dishpan stayed in the soapy water longer than any of the dishes, so it was certainly clean enough to use for cooking. We lived in the city (Springfield), so we used the bathroom sink for washing faces and feet and for full-body sponge baths in between baths in the tub. Bathing in the tub every night would have been considered wasteful.

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  7. I enjoyed the post about the dish pan and the songs. good job velvet.

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  8. Cute photo! I agree, it's probably the cleanest pan in the house! That reminds me, my mom kept the diaper pail she used for all us kids, it was enamel with a lid on it, every time she uses the soup pot I think of that diaper pail.

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  9. p.s. It's a shame so many wonderful old things got thrown out in favor of new stuff. Just think-kids born in the last couple of years will never know a television with a tube in it-they'll probably think it's as weird as we think the old TVs from the 1950s are.

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  10. Unfortunately, this particular post has become a target for spammers who flood it daily with comments that include links to products. As a result, I am going to close comments for now.

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