Penny, my childhood friend, and I could get in trouble no matter how good we were trying to be. In the 50's they had this wax called arrow-wax (not sure how it was spelled). You would use a mop or rag and put a very thin coat of wax on the floor and then buff it when it was dry to make it shine. My mom had lots of smarts because she would put clean socks on us kids and let us pretend it was a skating ring and slide all over polishing her floor for her.
My mom worked at a grocery store and used to buy things on sale to stock up when it was cheaper. Can you see this coming,.
TV came to central Oregon...yep those floors looked like they were coated with at least 4" of wax to shine that way.
Time for us to surprise my mom and make her floors shine like on TV. First you remove all furniture from the room...done. Then you mop floor...done. Then you spread the wax on the floor...done with all 3 gallons we could find for a nice thick shine like on TV...Let it dry....Done. Off we go horse back riding until it gets dry and we leave just enough time to get home and slide and put things back before mom walks through that door and is surprised...yep all done.
We come back home 1/2 hour before mom is due home from work and open the door to see our big surprise and stand there with our mouths hanging open to the floor...OH NO!! MOMS WHITE FLOOR IS A SMEARED UGLY YELLOW! OH NO, we are going to be dead soon.
Mop buckets out, scrub brushes in hand and down on our hands and knees. When mom and dad opened that door there was two girls up to their knees in suds and tears streaming down our faces scrubbing away.
Thankfully mom and dad had a heart and we did not get in trouble but they spent all their evening after working all day cleaning up the mess and we were helping. Lesson learned, we never waxed the floor again and mom never asked us for help waxing. We were back to waxing with our socks and all were happy again
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