GED4WEB version 4.41 Spiers Elizabeth [Female] b. 17 SEP 1897 - d. 21 FEB 1982
Have you ever seen a washing machine with rollers. I'll bet you haven't. Well Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Bill had people come up and put a great big pot outdoors on a fire and they is the way they did their clothes.
We thought we were lucky because we had a washing machine. We were lucky until it came time to wash Daddy's overalls. Greesey and the only soap we had was cake soap. We washed all the other clothes then in went his greasy overalls. When you got through you had just much grease on the washing machine and the rollers that did not come off of the overalls. So when you got through, you had to get the grease off of the machine and the rollers and that was a choir. I was so happy when the a Chinese man came to live down the street and he had a laundry and he charged fifteen cents a overall, and I was the happiest person in the world. No more greasy overalls, to wash.
Have you ever had to wash curtains and then you boil the starch and then you dripped the curtains in the starch and then it was a job to put the curtains on stretchers that had little nails around the edges. It was a choir, because if you stuck your finger on the little nails they bled all over the curtains and then it was a job to do all over. I can see why they did not do curtains but every six months. It was a job everyone regretted, but the curtains certainly looked good and clean for a while.
Aunt Elizabeth Brown was a saint, she helped everyone in Carson, VA. She did little things no one knew about. One time she was sending Lucy money for Mother and Lucy would put aside because she know Aunt Eliza would need it. so sure enough Lucy called me and said Aunt Eliza was going to Hermitage nursing home and needed the money she had sent Lucy. So Lucy and I took it over to her, and afterwards we ate lunch at a little place on the highway. The girl that took our menu told us she would charge for our meals, but Aunt Eliza was free. She is a saint, always helping out. I would not charge her for anything.
Aunt Jamie had a house full of antiques, why not she had no children, so she spent her money at everyone's auctions and bought up all the antiques she knew about, beside she had Granny's furniture. Anyway she had an antique sewing table, it had a secret compartment in it and everyone that came to her house she would say I am leaving that to you. It was a pretty thing. She told everyone that. Anyway they had an auction when she went to the Hermitage and the table was not there. Whether Robert Jarratt or Dorothy Milroy, got it and paid for it before the auction don't know. Only it was promised to everyone. Just wonder who got it.
Charles Tomes and Kathryn went to the auction as well as all of the Spiers. Charles bought all of the antique glasses and small dishes. We knew that Kathryn wanted them so when they came up for bid all stepped back and Charles bid on them for Kathryn.
They had an family auction for Grandma's stuff and we all bid on it at her house on Colonial Ave, upstairs from Mary. Everyone bid on what they wanted to remind them of Grandma. I was coming in from the river and the book case came up. Nancy spoke up and said My mother wants that, and no one would bid on it. So she got it for me. I love it, love to run my hands over it as it brings back so many memories. It originally belonged to Uncle Junius church among a lot of stuff of hers. When Uncle Junius children sold the house that Grandma had she asked it they wanted the old furniture and they said No. Its made of old quarter sawn oak and its beautiful. Uncle Conway had put a lot of wooden plugs to hold up the shelves and he made them so that made it more precious to me anyway.
Another story, when Nancy was baptized I asked Uncle Conway and Grandma to be sponsors in baptism. Grandma said yes and all the family said Uncle Conway would say no. When the day came, we heard a taxi pull up in front of the Church Grace and Holy and in came Conway. He took his vows and was a good God Father to her. He bought a prayer book and every time we came down to see Grandmother and Uncle Conway he would ask her perniet questions from the prayer book. She loved him dearly, and he did her.
When he died his son from Ohio came to Richmond, hired a lawyer and asked for Conway's money. Well, he wanted money because he was in the construction business and he needed it to start a new project. Kathryn and Charles bought he and his third wife over to my house. He looked like a rough copy of my brother, so there was no denying he was a Spiers. His Mother had married again after going North. When asked if he wanted Uncle Conway's sailing boat he had painstaking built over 20 years, he said no give it to someone that thinks well of Uncle Conway. So its in little Conway's hand and I know he loves it. Richard Clark Spiers went back north and we have heard nothing from him since. Nice person. Thanks for listening, Marian
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