Up until about three years ago, Mary had made almost everything that the family wore, however recently in the general store and in the clothing shops along Main Street there were factory-made clothing for sale at a price not too much more then what the clothes would cost to make. Mary raised vegetables in her garden and took in extra laundry to earn some additional money for the family. She saved up that extra money and went and bought everyone in the family a new piece of factory-made clothing in town. For herself she had bought the ostrich plume hat and felt as though she was the height of fashion when she wore it. She hitched up June to the cart and set out down the road. When she was growing up in Central Pennsylvania her father had tried very hard to make sure his daughters could take care of themselves. Mary and her three sisters attended school until the age of 16 and learned how to read everything, including classic books, write proper correspondence and how to do arithmetic. They also learned how to drive a horse cart and how to farm. Since she married a trade worker she no longer needed to know how to farm, but driving the cart by herself today was an exhilarating feeling. She looked to the west, saw rain clouds gathering, she hoped she could make it home quickly. One thing Mary had learned the hard way is that there were countless ways to get a cart stuck on a muddy road.

When she arrived in town she first went to the general store to indulge in her one weakness, magazines. She loved to skim through the pages of Literary Digest, McClure’s and The Living Age. These magazines were full of exciting, new information about the latest fashions, home-remedies and housekeeping ideas. Sometimes if she looked at one magazine too long Mr. Henderson, the store clerk, would encourage her to buy it. Today that very thing happened. She reached into her handbag and drew out $.05 cents for the magazine. She heard the newsboys still crying out the headlines on their respective corners and one caught her attention about a society divorce in Boston. Divorces were so uncommon that they made juicy headlines in any paper.

On her way to the butcher she walked past the nice restaurant in town. She overheard two fashionably dressed women talking about their recent trip by train to Baltimore, Maryland. It was obvious that these two women were not from Field and came from families of wealth. Extremely rich families didn’t exist in Field, however there were some very poor migrant workers that lived in shanties on the other side of town. Mary acknowledged the fact that she was lucky to live in this nice town with not too big of a gap between the rich and the poor, but she knew that wasn’t how it was everywhere. She had once read that Andrew Carnegie made $10 million dollars per year when the average American made only $500.

Remembering that she had to get home before the children came home from school and the rain came she went quickly onto the butcher, the fishmonger, the egg man, the milk man and the provisioner where she could buy some fruit and vegetables. She carefully checked the meat and the milk to make sure that it was good. There was no state or national agency that checked the quality of food and she had gotten sick too many times from bad meat that she was always careful. She also stopped by the post office and picked up a letter addressed to the family from a cousin in Nebraska. Someone had once suggested in town that the mail be delivered to everyone’s individual houses, instead everyone coming to the post office. That hilarious comment was the talk of the whole county for a month.

Anna hurried home, tethered the horse and cart and changed into more comfortable clothes. Even though the Smiths didn’t have electricity yet, they did have an icebox near their kitchen where the ice company would drop off an ice block every three days. This was supposed to help keep their food cool. The icebox was a special present Henry had given her. She packed the meat, fish, eggs and milk away in the icebox and cleaned up the house. After Anna and Joseph arrived home from school and had finished their chores Mary sewed and ironed while they worked on their homework. Ironing was very hard work because in order to get the iron hot enough Mary had to place it on top of the stove to heat it up and take it off with a special rod. Then she had to make sure the iron didn’t leave any burn marks on the clothes. After Anna finished her homework, she sat down at the piano and played some of the most current songs. Mary loved to hear her play and was very proud of how good she was. As dinner was almost ready Mary glanced at Joseph thought he looked a little sickly. This always made her nervous when one of her children or her husband got sick. There was just one doctor in town and there was no known way to cure a lot of diseases. Most of the time she solved her children’s ailment with a patent medicine. This could be bought in a bottle at the general store. It claimed to cure everything and smelled faintly of alcohol.