First Draft to Published

Erma Bombeck, American humorist and author of fifteen books, thousands of columns and a guest on television and radios, was a household name when I grew up. She was funny and although, I was not old enough to understand what she wrote about, it wasn’t much longer before I was to be a young mother and wife. Erma wrote humorously about the everyday mundane chores of suburban life and made them seem a little less daunting. Just knowing that life would not come to an end if the laundry was washed on Monday instead of Saturday, was a great comfort to me. Housewives would not be brought before a court of law if we didn’t adhere to the same strict schedules as our mothers and grandmothers had. Laundry on Monday, groceries on Tuesday . . . . . and these amazing women filled every day with something. I can still hear my mother saying, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” In her books At Wit’s End, Family – The Ties That Bind and Gag and others, Bombeck gave the American housewife permission t...