EDNA'S HOME PAGE PICTORIAL PAGES Young Edna in the Choir Edna and her Sisters Edna, parents, children Edna, Foster, children ARTICLES Born 100 Years ago! REMEMBRANCES Nancy's Tribute Bob's Tribute Chip Martz's Tribute Margery's Tribute Barbara's Tribute |
Nancy (Howlett) Murdock In 1993, when I wrote the “Murdock Muse Cookbook,” I prefaced it with this dedication: My mother, Edna A. Howlett, Whose favorite cake plate Contained the inscription: “Tis pleasant to labor For those we love,” And to my husband, Robert D. Murdock, Who supports my labors For those I love. She used to quote the inscription above, especially as she lovingly placed on the plate a cake she had made from scratch, even after those wonderful timesavers, the cake mixes, were available in our little town. Willing Hands: She was a hard worker, carrying canners full of water from the stove to the washing machine, or scrubbing the floor as we children played “train,” all lined up in a double row of chairs until the clean floor dried. Of course, this was only for rainy days, which made it more special. On sunny days, we were outdoors playing in all seasons. When we needed to re-stock the woodshed, Mom would order a load of wood. Then when it arrived and was dumped on the driveway, she would call us all outside, saying, “Many hands make light work.” And we would begin carrying it all to the woodshed. If she was not too tired or too pregnant, she might make little jokes and maybe even say a line from a nursery rhyme, to which we would all join in. As the little ones got tired, I would often be sent to take them in the house and keep them happy. I also got a chance to start dinner. I hate to admit it, but I got a little jealous when others were asked to do those chores as they became old enough. But I think of those trips back and forth to the woodshed as a positive influence on my future life. Sometimes the job is not exciting or fun, but you just have to trudge through it. My mother was very good at that. Learning to Cook: As a teenager, I used to yearn to be allowed to cook a roast. Although I had plenty of chances to bake potatoes, boil pasta or carrots, or grill a few hot dogs on the old fireplace in “the grove” at the edge of our property, the fish and good meat were off limits, as were any other items that were costly in terms of money or ration stamps. At first my mother indicated that we couldn’t take a chance on wasting something that required ration stamps to purchase. But later another reason popped up. Mom said she didn’t think it was fair to ask my father to eat dinners made by a beginner cook. He had already had to suffer through the learning process with Mom, and she was grateful that he had been patient. She didn’t want to repay his patience by stretching it to another beginner cook. I admit I was a little miffed at that, since I liked all of the meals I did get to work on. But I have to agree that her reasoning was sound! Blueberry Summers: I learned early on about harvesting. My mother was good at getting everyone to pick a lot of blueberries, which grew wild in abundance around our house or across the road in Woodward’s cow pasture. Not only did we make plenty of blueberry cupcakes or pies, as well as cereal with fresh blueberries for breakfast, but we also canned lots of blueberries to be opened when the blueberry season was over. Some years we all picked blueberries in Woodward’s patch to make a little money. We paid Woodwards a modest amount per quart, and then we took the boxed berries to the Coop to be sold in Boston. It was not an easy way to riches, but it did teach us a lot about business, and we enjoyed working together. We learned to avoid the cowflaps, but the cows were very easygoing as long as we didn’t get in their way. Decorating: Mom could get enthusiastic about almost anything, whether it was a new color scheme for the kitchen, new curtains made from unbleached muslin decorated with three coordinated colors of bias binding, a thorough cleaning of the bedrooms, or the start of a garden. One winter she got excited about making braided rugs from woolen strips. Her plan was that we would have braided rugs to cover the linoleum in the living room and bedrooms, both to keep the floor warm and to beautify the house. Five years later, the first rug in the assigned box was still the size of a cooky sheet. I can see a lot of her influence in my enormous batch of fabric for quilting, which is stashed around the unfinished quilts in the guest room. Mom’s Former Life: She was a certified grammar school teacher, having completed the two-year course at Fitchburg Normal School. Every so often, a piece of that part of her life would surface. One day when we were cleaning her bedroom, she opened a box and got out what she called a “fruit knife.” This had been for fixing snacks when she and her classmates got together. She indicated it was a standard item for the girls to pack for college. I used to read books from the town library about girls away at school, so this was particularly interesting to me. Tales of making fudge got me excited about that magic day when I would attend college and stay up late with my roommates, sneaking in a batch of fudge after Lights Out. She also had a couple of years’ worth of needlework magazines, which I thought were fabulous. These were only black and white and had few pictures, but they had Ideas! I now have a number of boxes of quilting magazines acquired over the past 20 years, so many that they have begun to appear in stacks around the bedroom. I find it difficult even to consider cutting them up or tossing them in the recycling bin. And I think often of Mom and her enthusiasm for her small magazine stash. As a certified teacher, Mom had even taught school in a one-room schoolhouse for a year before she got married. I still enjoy looking at the photo of Mom and her eight grades of students. Most of the children in that part of Hubbardston entered first grade speaking only Finnish. They gradually learned English from the older children at school. To prepare for her teaching job, Mom had studied Finnish to learn a few basic phrases. So the first day, she stood up in front of the earnest children with their hands folded on their desks and said in Finnish, “I am the teacher.” They all looked at her with puzzled faces. That was the only time she ventured into that linguistic area! The school superintendent was particularly pleased with one of Mom’s innovations at the school. She got the children to cooperate in making lunch for all, one day a week. She would make a list of ingredients, and her students would agree on what each could bring. Then she would put it together over the little potbellied wood-burning stove. They all enjoyed such tasty lunches as hot corn chowder with crackers. As Long As It Was Nutritious: My mother would have fit in perfectly with the 70s men and women who were concerned about not wasting food, and other recycling projects. We ate any meat that was edible. In fact, baked stuffed beef heart was one of my favorites. I can’t tell you how many people have been grossed out by that statement. We made the same stuffing as for turkey. The heart was stuffed and sometimes wound with string, with slices of salt pork on top to keep this delicious meal from getting dry in the baking process. My brother Andy’s favorite breakfast treat was to have a lamb kidney, sliced and sauteed (which we always called “fried”). We ate any kind of liver: pork, beef, or chicken livers. For some, we used bacon and onions to improve the taste. For others, flour, salt, and pepper were all the seasoning that was needed before they hit the frying pan. When my mother visited her sister Phoebe, Aunt Phoebe always gave her whatever meat in her fridge was not getting used. The dogs may have resented not getting that nice aging steak, but Mom took it home and converted it to a good meal. Nobody in the family ever balked at eating pasta and tomato sauce with sliced steak pieces. Once a neighbor shot a raccoon and skinned it for the fur. We were offered the body, and my mother happily accepted it. She prepared it like a chicken and put it in the electric roaster. She had a little trouble with looking at it, though, because it looked like a baby resting there. She made sure to cut all the meat into portions before bringing it to the table, so we kids never saw what might have turned us off. Later, when the “Beverly Hillbillies” was a popular TV series, I thought their meats were perfectly understandable, considering what they had in their area. On another front, Mom’s favorite items at an evening meeting would be the sandwiches, not the sweets that attracted me. She would always volunteer to take home any leftovers. Since everyone knew she had a big family and actually used all leftovers, we had many treats. But first Mom would pick out all the sandwiches she especially liked. This was fine with us, as we were concentrating on hoping for the piece of cake or the cookies. I love eating out now at places where the servings are too large to eat in one sitting (which unfortunately is almost anywhere). I take all our leftovers home, even the crusty Italian bread. I hate to see food wasted. I know Mom would be feeling the same if she went out now. Recycling: No one knew that term back then, but my mother was an ace at recycling. She accepted everything people wanted to give her, including items of clothing that she knew were not good enough to use. The reason she took it all was that in each batch there was usually at least one good find. If not, anything woolen got cut into squares to be made into “Afghans.” She crocheted around the squares and put them together to make a nice bedcover. Any usable cottons might be cut down for children’s clothing. My Uncle Gerald was thrilled when Mom made my sister Polly three cute summer outfits from his shirts. Uncle Gerald was a salesman for the New England Coke Company, so he had to dress well. Once the necks of shirts were worn, the whole shirt had to go. For two years in high school, I wore a nice heavy woolen teal coat that my cousin Kenneth had outgrown. It was a “best” coat, so it wasn’t worn-looking at all. It was a 3/4 length coat, which fit me as a pretty much full-length coat. I chose this before any of my brothers could claim it, because I didn’t have a warm winter jacket. I recall some beautiful things Mom made out of old ladies’ underwear or leftover silk from the 19th century. A batch of beige pongee scraps became a lovely dress for Polly at about age 3. It was trimmed with a little burnt orange crochet and embroidery, and some leftover fancy buttons from her friend Dorothy. Mom made me a great jumper one time, using the lightweight grayish beige cashmere from a deceased woman’s petticoat. I was mortified when she accepted it as a special gift from her friend Gladys, who had been the woman’s caregiver. But the finished jumper had Mom’s beautiful embroidery in red yarn, which made the petticoat morph easily into a cherished article. At the Dump: But Mom’s recycling didn’t stop at items given to her personally. After my father died and Mom learned to drive a car, when she had to take a load of stuff to the dump, she would carefully look over the recent discards from other people to see if there was anything she might want to adopt. I suspect she may not have been the only person in town to forage, because the dump-master didn’t seem to rush to cover the discarded items with dirt. Her best find ever was a stack of bound volumes of “Peterson’s Ladies Book,” which closely resembled the better-known “Godey’s Ladies’ Book”. All the female relatives in Hubbardston got some of the plates of women’s stylish dresses from a prior era, excellent prints with hand-painted coloring. I think Polly may have at least one of those even now. Gardening: Led by both parents, we all gardened. We were not unique in that way, as vegetable gardens were part of survival, and flower gardens were a way to beautify any home. But we all loved gardening. Mom’s favorite flowers to raise were hollyhocks and zinnias. She got her first hollyhock seeds from Aunt Ethel, who mailed her an assortment from her own garden in Watertown. Hollyhocks take two years to mature, so the first year was unexciting. But after that, Mom had a good patch of hollyhocks in the back yard. She always had great luck with zinnias. She used to enjoy putting together an arrangement of zinnias in her purple vase, which had a ceramic handle. It was an easy winner at the annual fair in Hubbardston. I told about this in one of the seven flower poems I wrote one evening last year. Some memories are just too good not to share. Our vegetable gardens were always a good source of tomatoes and cucumbers, with green beans, beets, corn, summer and winter squash, potatoes, and other vegetables. One year Mom decided to enlarge our garden, so she asked the Dunlap brothers if she could use their field, which was just down the street. She hired a man to plow it, but we didn’t know about harrowing it, so we spent a lot of hours shaking big pieces of sod to get the dirt into the garden and the grass out of it. The next year we had it harrowed. But all of the years we had that garden, we had great results. My favorite memory of Mom’s flower gardens, though, is the year she and her friend Gladys Wheeler decided to use some of the big rocks to surround the trio of birch trees by the stonewall out front. It was a very heavy job, but they steadfastly stuck with it. Using a thick chain and a hefty crow-bar, they actually managed to get those big rocks into place and fill in the space with dirt. This was a remarkable achievement, especially considering that, except during the later part of each pregnancy, Mom never weighed as much as 100 pounds until she was in her mid-forties. We enjoyed years of visits from ruby-throated hummingbirds at the sweet peas, morning glories, and other beautiful flowers. Good Advice: When I was about fourteen, I received from my mother what has turned out to be the best piece of advice of my life. This was during the era when glamorous women were featured smoking cigarettes in popular magazines. Aunt Elsie had a fancy cigarette case on the coffee table, and after lunch and dinner she would sit on the couch, lift the cover of the box, and smoke one cigarette. So one day I said to my mother, "When I grow up, I'm going to wear red fingernail polish and smoke cigarettes!" Mom thought a minute and said, "I've noticed that a lot of my friends who smoke seem to want to stop smoking. But it seems to be really difficult to stop, once you get started. So, to make sure it is something you want to do for the rest of your life, you might want to hold off smoking until you're 21." After a brief discussion, we agreed that I would wait until then to start. In fact, I promised . By the time I reached that age, I had absolutely no desire to smoke. I considered it a smelly, expensive habit. I hated to find ashes and ground-out cigarette in coffee cups or saucers when I was washing dishes. It made me ill to ride in a car with the windows rolled up and the male driver smoking. Whoo-boy, am I glad my mother gave me that advice. What a woman my mother was! |
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