Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (3 page)

Special dinners also played a part in the family reunion. In 17th-century England, mum might serve frumety, a kind of wheat pudding made with wheat grains boiled in sweet milk and flavored with sugar and spices. In Scotland, dinners featured “carlings,” a type of pancake. Eventually the name “Carling Sunday” became the Scottish name for Mothering Sunday.

But no matter what they called her day, very likely Mom was glad to finally get a visit.

Get ready for those 1950s moms—with perfect hair, aprons, and pearls!

N
obody claims that watching TV is the best way to study history. But then again, you can just about track the changing attitudes toward motherhood by tracking the changing roles of moms on television. In tribute to all those TV moms, we’re happy to recall some of our favorites, beginning with the batch that started it all!

The Show:
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet
(1952–1966) It may surprise you that the first TV mom married to an Ozzie was Harriet (not Sharon!). Harriet was the eminently sensible mother and housewife of
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet
, a long-running sitcom about the Nelson family. The show was one of the first sitcoms and a forerunner of the reality TV shows of today. Even though the episodes were fictional, they featured the reallife Nelson family starring as themselves. Even the house the TV family lived in was modeled on the Nelsons’ reallife home.

Of course the TV show wasn’t exactly realistic when it came to the portrayal of Harriet Nelson. On TV, Harriet was a housewife who never seemed to stray far from the
kitchen, but the real Harriet was a working mom who spent long days at the studio.

Fun Fact:
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet
actually started out as a radio show in 1944.

The Show:
Leave It to Beaver
(1957–1963)

June Cleaver (played by Barbara Billingsley) was the stylish mom married to Ward Cleaver in
Leave It to Beaver.
Most of the stories in the series revealed how June and Ward and their older son, Wally, coped with the misadventures of young Theodore, a.k.a. the Beaver.

Whenever June appeared (whether she was handing Beaver his lunch box, tucking him into bed, or vacuuming the living room rug) she was dressed to the nines, sporting a fancy string of pearls and usually wearing heels. Mrs. Cleaver never had a bad hair day and never lost her temper.

The Cleavers were the ideal family, and to this day, when you say nuclear family, many people immediately envision the Cleavers—two kids, a dad who works, and a mom who stays home to take care of the kids and the house. (Though the pearls are optional.)

Fun Fact:
Leave It to Beaver
aired its very first episode on October 4, 1957, the same day that the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik I.

The Show:
The Donna Reed Show
(1958–1966)

On
The Donna Reed Show
, Donna Stone (played by Donna Reed) adopted a daughter after her oldest girl went off to college. Living in the appealing small town of Hillsdale,
Donna was another stay-at-home mom with three kids and a pediatrician husband, Dr. Alex Stone. Her wholesome family relied on her to help them out with family misunderstandings, as well as school and dating woes.

Like her counterparts Harriet and June, Donna was a stay-at-home mom, but she was more involved in the lives of her friends and those in her community—even in her husband’s problems. Viewers liked Donna’s friendly, warmhearted ways and considered her a perfect wife and mother.

Fun Fact:
Few series fans realized that the actress was actually one of the first female TV executives; Donna Reed was an uncredited director and coproducer of her own show.

The brave feline mother who nearly died—not once, but five times—to save her kittens demonstrates the true meaning of mother’s love.

T
he scrawny calico cat was living the hardscrabble existence of a stray in a gritty neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. She would have remained one of the thousands of nameless stray cats had it not been for her heroic actions on March 29, 1996. On that fateful date, the calico had been tending her five kittens, born just four weeks before, when the abandoned garage she had made her home in suddenly burst into flames.

As the fire raged, firefighters were shocked to observe the plucky mom, though seriously burned herself, repeatedly brave the inferno—emerging each time with another of her kittens. She carefully placed each kitten just outside the door before going back for the next. When all five were safely outdoors, she began taking them, one by one, across the street, farther away from danger.

At four weeks old, the kittens could never have survived the blaze had it not been for their mother’s loving attention. But the mother cat was severely injured. Her eyes were blistered shut and she could not see. The pads of her paws were scorched and her ears and nose were singed. There were bare patches on her face and body where the fur had been burned off.

David Gianelli was one of the firefighters on duty the night of the garage fire. An animal lover, he was touched by the little cat’s courage and determination. As soon as the fire was contained, he found a cardboard box and gently transported the mother and her kittens to the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington on Long Island. During the trip, the calico cat kept touching each of the kittens in turn. Even though she couldn’t see them, it seemed as though she were counting them to make sure they were all right.

By the time they reached their destination, the mother cat was barely alive and two of her kittens were in bad shape. The doctors at the Animal League worked feverishly to save them. League workers named the brave little mother Scarlett after the red patches of skin showing where the fur had burned away.

Scarlett needed oxygen to breathe, intravenous antibiotics to fight infection, drugs to combat shock, and antibiotic ointments for her skin. Despite the odds, she began to improve within a couple of days of constant care. When the swelling around her face dissipated, she was able to open her eyes; to everyone’s surprise, she was able to see again. Eventually the tips of her ears had to be amputated, but her recovery from her ordeal was deemed miraculous.

Only one of the kittens succumbed to pneumonia as a result of smoke inhalation. The others made a full recovery.

News of Scarlett and her exploit spread quickly as tales of her bravery were featured on numerous news broadcasts and television talk shows. North Shore Animal League
was deluged not only with local requests for news and offers to adopt her and her kittens but also those from around the world, from as far away as South Africa and Japan. With over 1,500 adoption offers, Marge Stein, manager of public relations at the Animal League, held a contest to find Scarlett and the kittens the best home.

From the thousands of entries they received, the Animal League selected Karen Wellen to be Scarlett’s proud owner. Wellen had written of her great empathy with the cat. Having survived a car accident, which left her with a slight disability, Wellen felt that she and Scarlett had much in common.

Today Scarlett is living a life of ease at the Wellen residence in Brooklyn, a far cry from the Brooklyn she used to know. Her life couldn’t be more different from her existence on the streets. She is healthy, has gained weight, and only occasionally appears somewhat distressed at the sound of fire sirens. Scarlett’s four surviving kittens have also found good adoptive homes with families in New York.

Even after adoption, Scarlett continued to be honored for her exemplary motherhood. In 1999, the IAMS pet food company named Scarlett “the Top Cat of the Century,” after she won 29 percent of the vote online. On September 19, 2000, she won the first Scarlett Award for Animal Heroism, which was named after her. The award-winning cat has even had two books written about her.

Perhaps the most touching tribute of all came on May 12, 1996. The New York
Daily News
printed part of a poem composed by one of Scarlett’s many admirers. The poem is titled, “The Heroine,” and reads in part: