Where do you put a guide to domestic duties?

A few years ago, 2013, a gift was received from Mrs. Robert (Renata) Voeltz — a 1951 “Your Household Guide” sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society of Our Saviors Lutheran Church. This book contained 1,001 helpful household hints selected from several hundred home recipe books of Walsworth Bros., located in Marceline, Missouri, distributed throughout the nation…. It was a wealth of information. For instance, baking, birthstones and flowers, canning, children’s section, cooking, business laws, federal old age benefits. Then, freezing, gardening, health and accident, holidays, insects and kitchen measures. Going on…laundry, paints, picnics, postal rates, presidents of the U.S., sewing, state capitals, time savers and wedding anniversaries.

These were only “hints:” For even consistency when making a pie crust, add water with a clothes sprinkler.” (Clothes sprinkler?? Perhaps a thing of the past.) To see whether old yeast was still good, put it in warm water with a teaspoon of sugar, stir. If it foams in 10 minutes, use it right away. Place an egg in a pan of water — if fresh, it will turn on its side; a few days old, it will tilt upwards; if stale it will stand on end; if very old it will float! Rub scissors with butter to cut up marshmallows. Sprinkle talcum powder into new shoes, they will seem much more comfortable when new. Onions will not make your eyes water if scalding water is poured over them before they are peeled. Boil potato or carrot peelings in the teakettle to remove lime. When scalding a chicken, add one cup soda to the boiling water — the feathers will come off easier and the flesh will be clean and white.

Postal rates? First Class – 3 cents for each ounce. Postal cards – 1 cent each. Second Class – newspapers – 1 cent per two ounces. Third Class – 2 cents for each two ounces; Fourth Class – Parcel Post – must weigh eight ounces.

Sponsors of the book? Full pages: Home Federal Savings & Loan, three offices, savings accounts insured up to $10,000, home loans, convenient monthly payments. Distel & Co.: Furniture, funeral services, ambulance; service within the reach of all, day and night phones. Rendahl & Highum: Feed, seed, grain. Burgess & Sons, Inc.: Lumber, building materials, Clech quality coal, paint and hardware, big enough to accommodate, small enough to appreciate.

Half pages: Kvale’s IGA Store; Kehrberg’s Our Own Hardware, Sears Roebuck & Co. “Shop at Sears & Save.” Biel Implement Co. – Oliver and Minnesota machinery and repairs. One third page: Nash Cafe, Valley Dry Cleaners, Stickan’s Ben Franklin, Webster & Kohn N.J.C. Pure Foods; McConnell Electric; Sward-Kemp Drug; Sande’s Implement – Allis Chalmers and New Idea farm equipment and Studebaker cars; Root River Oil Station – Shell gas and oil; Art’s Husky Station – Goodyear tires; Clifford Walker’s D-X Station – home and auto supplies; Denny’s Cafe – home baked pastries.

As cultural Christianity goes, this seems harmless, even appealing. I’m still not seeing much gospel or cross.