Stories of babies past

Haley, here. Molly is too tired to type. I guess I'll have to pick up the slack.

When Grandma Huber brought us dinner on Thursday night, she told us a couple of stories I thought I'd record for posterity's sake.

Formula

We were talking about the ease of washing dishes in a dishwasher and using formula purchased at the store. Grandma used to make her baby formula. The ingredients were, according to my Grandma, heavy cream [or maybe canned milk], water, and Karo syrup. She also added vinegar to the mix because it kept the hard Magna water from ruining her pan. She said that the older kids would moan and groan whenever she made a batch because it stunk so bad. Grandma's final comment was, "well, none of them died!"

Cars and Kids

Car seats are, of course, a more recent baby safety device. My parents didn't have one for me and my grandparents definitely didn't have them for my parents. In fact, even though they were required by law, I remember occasionally not putting my brother in one when he was a baby. When I was in junior high, I tended Willie while I was off track from year-round school. My grandma would drive down and pick me up when it was time to head over to school for basketball practice. We never used the car seat. I would hold Willie on my lap until we got to Brockbank. Once ther, we switched. I'd hand Willie over to Grandma, grab my shoes and water, and be gone. Grandma would either keep Willie on her lap or (as she told us Thursday) put Willie on the floor underneath her legs while she drove back home. She'd tend him until my mom or dad picked him up.

Grandma said she used a similar tactic the first time she and Grandpa took their family to Disneyland. Geneil was just a baby. They borrowed Great Grandpa Huber's Cadillac and put the 4 older girls in the back seat and Geneil sat up in the front, either on Grandma's lap, or again, on the floor.

She also told us about an early infant seat called the "car bed." I imagine it was something like this picture, but more bed-like than seat-like. It was a baby bed that had two large hooks to attach it to the passenger seat and then it hung over the back seat. Grandma said she once was so frustrated with Jackie screaming all the time that she got in the car, put Jackie in the car bed and decided to go for a ride to calm her down. She headed up 9th South and as they were going up the steep hill, she had to stop quick and the car bed flipped over the top of the seat and threw Jackie down on the floor, with the car bed on top of her. It sounds a bit scary, but Grandma was laughing like crazy telling us the story.

She also told us about how she would load up kids in the station wagon with all of the seats down in the back. The kids could just slide all over the back (no seatbelts, of course). She said they would always yell, "Slam on the breaks, Mom!" and they'd all go sliding and crashing one way. Then, they'd yell, "Dig it, mom, dig it!" and they'd all go sliding and crashing the other way.