Pioneer stories give me a dose of perspective

I face an ongoing dilemma: I love having a clean house, but I hate cleaning.

But with an incoming overnight guest on the way last weekend, I tackled our abode in an all-out scrub fest.

By nightfall, it was far from immaculate (because let's be real here), but by golly, it was a lot cleaner than when I started.

Then sometime around 11 p.m. Saturday, the first of two overnight sandstorms arrived, pummeling the north side of our house.

I raced around in the dark, slamming windows shut and muttering (OK, maybe it was louder than muttering) obscenities.

After the wind eased and we had our requisite five drops of rain, I reopened the windows to the cool, clean night air.

Then the second sandstorm arrived straight out of the south.

Another mad dash ensued with windows slamming and no attempt to even pretend to mutter this time.

Sunday's sunrise revealed a layer of grit on every surface in the house, and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

With no time to spare for even a mad dash with a dust cloth, we headed to the airport to retrieve our incoming traveler, stopping on the way home for a leisurely lunch with relatives of my husband.

As we lingered around the table, a pile of old family photos was circulated, along with some fine old stories.

One tale, in particular, seemed to be the one I was meant to hear.

My husband's great-grandparents built and operated a two-story boarding house in Temple, Texas, starting sometime around 1900.

After Joab (the great-grandfather) died, Laura (the great-grandmother) moved the rest of the family to the bottom floor and rented out the six upstairs bedrooms to pay bills.

Her family by then included several grandchildren who lived there so they could attend school in Temple. It was no picnic to be a kid at the boarding house, even if their grandma was the proprietor.

“There was only one bathroom, and it was on the main floor,” according to the written family history, “but it did have a bathtub and a flush toilet. The granddaughters cleaned the rooms, mopped the floors, changed the linen, filled the water pitchers in each room, and emptied the slop jars.”

(If you're unfamiliar with “slop jars,” allow me to remind you again that this entire structure had one toilet.)

“Each room had a china wash basin on a washstand so people could pour water into the basins and wash their faces,” the account continued. “They could also use the bath and toilet downstairs, but usually used the wash basin and the slop jars. The slop jars had to be emptied into the toilet downstairs, washed, and put back in the rooms.”

Additionally, the account went on, “The boarders often brought bedbugs so the granddaughters would paint kerosene all over the bed slats and sides of the mattresses and all the bedding was boiled in a big pot in the back yard.”

All-righty then.

Suffice it to say that by the time we arrived home that evening - the home, mind you, where three of us would be sharing two full bathrooms, and where I'd washed and dried the sheets in my indoor electrical appliances the day before - my outlook had changed.

The layer of gritty fine dust on everything suddenly didn't matter quite as much.

There were no slop jars waiting to be emptied and we didn't need to paint kerosene on the bed slats before we crawled between our clean sheets.

Perspective. Those pioneer stories give me a good dose of it every single time.

Betty Williamson will take a sandstorm over a slop jar any day. Reach her at:

[email protected]