Cleanliness is an Attitude

Attitude Floor and Wood cleaner.

I just found a product I’ve been looking for. Something to polish wood that isn’t toxic. Lately, I inherited some antique furniture but I am loathe to clean it, as I do not like furniture polishes.

Now, admittedly, my job as a child was to polish the furniture, using Pledge (oil and aerosol) and also to clean the bathtub, using Old Dutch Powder. All this crap going into my young lungs,mixing with the ubiquitous clouds of second hand smoke.

But parents didn’t worry about such things back then. They didn’t worry much. It was good times, stable times for the middle class, give or take a Cuban Missile Crisis or two.

I guess the threat of nuclear war looming over the planet made every other worry pale in comparison.

Well, the prosperity helped, too.

Pledge, Old Dutch, DDT and all the sweet smelling lead emanating fromm the tail pipes of those bright pink TBirds with the big fancy tailfins.

And the 60′s air pollution in the city. Legend. Any person who lived in the suburbs or country knew that  visit to the city meant smelly hair and even smokey underwear.

OK. All that and I’ve had only one serious lung disease, pneumonia, when my own kids were about 10, caused by being run down and by being prescribed too many anti-biotics for little things like sore throat and then this mighty bug swept through our household and I didn’t have the resistance to fight it.

Anyway, if the 60′s were bad, the crap in our food has only gotten worse. So I do buy organic veggies when I can and ‘artisanal’ meats like chicken, which, our course actually have texture and taste.

But the other day I had to laugh or cry. I was visiting my sister in law, in her beautiful home with the cathedral windows and she found ants in the kitchen and began spraying all over with Raid.

I turned to my husband and said, “There go all the benefits from eating organic for the past 10 years.”

The woman, a product of the 50′s, is intrepid when it comes to dirt and bugs and such. The stronger the cleaner the better.

And I only use these Attitude Products. Which are fine. For cleanliness. For that 50′s pristine look, well go elsewhere.

Now, my story Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf is about the 1910 era, the era of Pure Soap, Pure Water and Pure Women.

The Soap-Industrial Complex got a toehold in that era. In large part because dirty homes (and the mostly immigrant women who kept them) were being blamed for all the problems of industrialization. All the bodily illnesses and all the ‘moral’ ones too.

The adage “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was not a mere metaphor,back then, it was to be taken LITERALLY. And it gave the moral high ground automatically to the elite and upper middle class who could afford servants. And it kept other middle class women from getting ‘restless woman syndrome’ and picking up a placard to protest their second class status.

And this ideology filtered down through the century, reaching a kind of apex in the 1950′s, for it was used to drive women back into the home after the war.

And these cleaning product companies, that promoted PURITY above all, because GIANTS over the century and now many of them make anti-cancer and asthma drugs too. And pesticides too. Kind of weird, I’d say. Kind of weird, but good for business and as well all now know WHATEVER IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS IS “GOOD.”

Now that we’ve had THE TALK…

Two ads in the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book 1912. Marion Nicholson’s copy which I have been calling the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Well, it’s a brilliant Saturday morning, and the huge maple outside my ‘office’ window is in full-blaze mode, filling up my field of view like a Van Gogh, or Tom Thomson, as I sit on my bed typing. It would be a good day to go for a drive, but my husband is working today.

It’s the Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend.

This morning I had a scone, a cold one, for breakfast. I made a batch yesterday afternoon, using the simple recipe for Baking Powder Biscuits, from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I used my new Ikea Kitchen Cart as extra counter space.

The scones were a tad undercooked because my 10 year old electric range is on the blink. Its electronic door-lock pops on at any given time, and that turns the oven off. Oh, for good old fashioned wood stove!

When I flicked through this volume a few newspaper clippings fell out. One tiny one was titled SAVE WOOD ASHES. “Save the ashed from wood fires. Store them in boxes or barrels in a dry place until spring, when they should be spread over the garden for high fertilizing value. An eco-tip, before such things existed.

Marion, I know from the 1913 Nicholson letters, was using a gas stove in her flat on Hutchison in Montreal. But Mother Margaret used a wood stove, an old fashioned one without thermostat for she tested the heat of the oven with her elbow.

This 1912 cookbook has an advert for a deluxe stove, wood and coal fired. Smith and Anthony, Hub Ranges, Boston. With Roller bearing ash pan and coal pan.

Now I think these hybrid coal/wood stoves were a bit of the 8 track tapes of their time. A technological loose end. Marion was using gas in Montreal in 1913, a type of cooking that is still preferred today among chefs and in restaurants.

I’ve written before about how microwave ovens were invented in the 60′s and promoted as complete kitchens in the 70′s, (I have an ad from Chatelaine showing a woman (slim and lovely) cooking a complete Thanksgiving meal, turkey and the trimmings using her microwave. HA!). These spage age cookers became expensive coffee warmers in the 80′s, until microwavable only fast-foods, over-priced and and over-salted, were invented in the 90′s. (In the 80′s my father in law purchased a state of the art 1,000 dollar microwave and, yes, used it as a coffee warmer.)

Anyway, this blog is about how advertising works, and not about its misfires. The ads above, also in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, are for competing brands of vegetable oil, being promoted in the 1910 era. One brand, Cottolene, went the way of the DODO. The other Crisco, became a household name. (I used some Crisco to oil the cooking pan for my scones, yesterday. I had some on hand from another cooking-history experiment a few months ago when I tried to bake my Mom’s famous chocolate mint cake.)

Cottolene is ‘economical’ and ‘wholesome’ but Crisco is “exquisitely clean and pure.” The P word again. Crisco “never gets strong, it stays fresh and sweet.” See how “delicate and dainty” it makes your foods. (Cottonlene is like Mom, but Christco, I mean Crisco, is like her prettiest, most desirable daughter.)

Hmm. I have another Crisco story on this blog, a 1915 story, where Margaret Nicholson receives a direct mail advert for Crisco in the mail, with coupon for free sample, but she sticks to her old ways, using butter and lard. (It’s wartime and butter is expensive.)

In the blog previous, I quote Marion talking about making 3 apple pies in March 1913. It’s the new generation of cooks, like Marion, who are being targetted with this Pre-War ad for Crisco, not their moms.

PS. This morning’s New York Times has a review of a new play by Doug Hughes at the Roundabout Theatre Company, Mrs. Warren’s Profession. What cool timing. I now have a reason to take that weekend trip to New York.

I think I’ll ask my son’s girlfriend, who is doing her Masters in Criminal Law and who has a special interest in prostitution law. (I hope she can get away.)

She also loves to shop for clothes….She says she can’t cook, but she doesn’t have to. My son is a chef.

The play, starring Cherry Jones (a great name for this play, what can I say) is on only until November 21st. West 42nd Street. Oh, I must go.