Mama was a winner

Mama winning clothes dryer c 1955

My mother was a person who was always hopeful, whether we were hunting for mushrooms, trying a new recipe or browsing at a garage sale, she always thought something good was just around the corner.  She was fun and funny with a charming laugh and a great sense of humor.  Always loving and somewhat religious, she was raised going to a fundamentalist church, and she tried to follow those convictions.   

She read novels, I remember her telling me that when “Gone With the Wind” was first published, she loved that book so much that she stayed up reading it all night long to finish it.  In the 1940s and 50s I remember her in the kitchen with her radio on while doing dishes and preparing the next meal, listening to Helen Trent, a soap opera back in radio days.  Soap operas were named that because they were ongoing episodic stories that were sponsored by large soap manufacturers; I suppose opera referred to the drama of it all.

Mama always longed to be a writer.  She worked on stories and sent them off to various publications.  She loved to enter contests and write jingles and little “25 words or less” phrases about products and she would send them off with big hopes that she might win the grand prize.  Most of the time mama received a ‘thank you for entering’ letter in the mail and maybe a coupon for soap or some product.  Sometimes she would win a minor prize that we couldn’t wait to open and look at but it was always small and kind of cheap and not anything we would really use but this didn’t halt mama’s enthusiasm for writing.  She would send recipe entries to The Pillsbury Bake Off contest when the winning recipes were still all made from scratch and it wasn’t required to use the Pillsbury mixes or store bought pie dough or Jiff peanut butter in your entry.  Mama collected the Pillsbury books of the prize winning recipes each year and would try out some of the winning entries on us.

One year mama entered a contest that the grand prize was an electric clothes dryer.  We always hung our wet clothes out on a clothesline or by the stove in the winter.  Mama WON that contest for the dryer.  Our family was so happy and excited.  She had to go to Boise, Idaho to pick up the prize.  We were all very proud of mama.  Daddy and mama drove the pickup to Boise to get the dryer and stayed overnight with my great uncle Lynn Rumley and his family.  

Daddy and mama came back with stories of their trip.  Mama told about a place they went to eat where the food (each individual serving) was behind little glass doors.  She described how there was everything you could think of to eat and you could open the

little doors and take out whatever you wanted and put on your tray.  There were sandwiches and roast beef entrés and salads and mashed potatoes and fruit cups and soups.  Once you had all of the servings that you wanted to eat on your tray, you paid a cashier.  It sounded like a marvel of an invention to me, it was called an Automat.    Bonnie and I begged to hear that story over and over and asked questions about the food she saw behind the glass.  Was there pie and cake?  Were things warm or cold?  We wondered about the empty places once people had taken food out and mama said there were cooks in the back making the food and putting the next serving in the little space so it never appeared empty behind the little doors.  Bonnie and I wondered if we would ever get to eat at a place so grand.  Of course the best story of all was mama winning the dryer and seeing it brand new in the pickup when they came home.