It's A Wash

When I was growing up we owned few conveniences. For example, we never had a telephone. Which was okay because we almost never had anyone to call! We always had an automobile (with a working radio), clothes to wear, and usually a dog, but there were times we didn't have much else. This was the 'sixties, man! It was cool! When we had an actual roof over our heads as opposed to a tent, we had electricity (although I believe there were times we didn't actually pay for it), running water, indoor plumbing, a stove, and a refrigerator. For most of my childhood our sole luxury -- aside from the fact that we lived in the United States of America -- was a television set. We were rarely without that commodity.

During those interesting and thankfully infrequent times when our address was a campground, our "range" was a Coleman campstove and our "fridge" was a Coleman cooler. My mom could cook up a storm on that stove, and there was always cold milk in the cooler. The high pines were fragrant. Their needles provided a soft self-cleaning carpet, and the wind in their branches made a mysterious music if you were listening. Life was pretty good. Lighting was courtesy of a single Coleman lantern that required use of the little glowing sock-like mantles. Why we didn't go ahead and buy stock in the Coleman company, I'll never know! Well, maybe I do know. If Coleman stock was going at fifty cents a share, most of the time we couldn't have afforded a share for each family member. Not to mention the dog.

As for the facilities when camping, we only had to walk about a quarter-mile for those. It wasn't that bad because the weather's mild in southern Florida. The dicey part came when you had to deal with those torrential three-day monsoons for which the region is justifiably famous. My main difficulty with the restroom situation was when you had to walk that quarter-mile at night, alone ... because sometimes your loved ones hid in the bushes and jumped out to scare you. That was so funny! Not. Scarred me for life, it did. I still won't walk alone to the restroom after dark.

One thing my mother always insisted upon, though, was that we be clean and wear clean clothes (it may have been the 'sixties but we were not going to be mistaken for hippies). Generally this signified regular trips to the laundromat to wash the clothes and, if we were flush at the moment or lacked access to a clothesline, to dry them there too. I liked the laundromat with its overheated humid roar, odd cast of characters, tiny boxes of powdered soap (or space-age Salvo detergent tablets) for sale out of a dispenser that stood next to the change machine, and the rolling carts.

I was especially enamored of those rolling carts. You appropriated one upon your arrival and wheeled it around everywhere you went so that, when your clothes got done revolving in the huge dime-eating dryer with an entertaining window -- I just saw my pink nightgown! -- you could deftly position "your" cart beneath said dryer's cave-like mouth and rake your clean, hot, dry clothes into it. Then you glided importantly over to one of the big, worn, Formica-topped tables and did your folding. It was so much fun to go home with the clothes all folded and just plop them, still warm, into your waiting dresser drawers. Or, when we were camping, boxes that served as dressers.

More often than not, though, if memory serves, we toted the soggy laundry home and employed an ingenious horizontal-type dryer -- complete with solar energy -- to finish the job. That was before we settled in Florida and eventually acquired a wringer washer. A white behemoth with a tight-lipped rolling-pin maw, the washer sat on a six-by-six foot screened porch at the back of our house. My sister and I would sort the loads by color, fill the washer with water, add the soap, and set it agitating. The tub was spacious and it was rather satisfying watching the water turn gray with dirt that had been lurking in your clothes. After washing, you drained the tub out and added clean water for rinsing. When you judged the clothes were clean and no longer soapy, you started up the wringers and began pushing the dripping garments through the rollers where they fell, flat as unlucky cartoon characters, into a waiting basket on the other side.

We had a baby brother and sister so there were lots of "rubber pants" that you wanted to avoid pushing through there because invariably a plastic bubble would form and "pop" the diaper covers, rendering them useless. Also you lived in fear of getting distracted and pushing too hard, and having your fingers end up between the wringers. Man oh man, did that ever hurt. You commenced yelling and, if you had sufficient presence of mind, hit the handle on the side of the wringer housing, releasing the grip of the washer's powerful toothless gums. Then you hopped around, drawing what breath you could through your own (clenched) teeth, and examined the red pinpoints that had appeared on the ends of your squished digits. Hard times.

Next you headed outside, scanning the horizon for rainclouds. Seeing none, you got busy snapping each piece of laundry smartly, enjoying the resultant cool fine mist that settled over your sweaty face and arms. I favored the "overlap" system of hanging; it required fewer reaches into the clothespin bag and fewer squeezes on the spring-operated pins themselves. The sooner you were done, the sooner you could park your carcass under a tree and continue reading your book. It was always great fun too when, just about the time the clothes would be getting dry, you heard thunder in the distance, indicating the approach of rain. You'd tear outside and begin frantically removing the wash from the line lest it get re-soaked. "Rain is dirty," our stepfather always reminded us ominously. It was awful when the rain came just as the laundry was almost, but not quite, dry. That meant that after the storm you'd have to re-hang it to finish drying. Otherwise it would sour.

Why, oh why, you might be asking yourself at this point, can't she shut up already about the way they did laundry in the stone age? Well, stay with me. Today one of my lovely daughters called me from her place of work. Audrey is an Order Representative for Whirlpool Corporation in Knoxville, Tennessee. She works hard and is a team player, and they like her there. If you live in new construction -- whether it be a single-family dwelling or an apartment or condo -- in the Great Lakes region of the USA, and you have Whirlpool appliances, chances are that my daughter had a hand in those appliances being delivered in a timely fashion for installation in your kitchen or laundry room. Just so you know. Plus which, she's a dollface and a Johnny Depp fan ... simply a marvelous girl, very smart and sweet. No, I am not biased. Okay, maybe a little.

The reason she called me today and her first words were "Guess What!?!" -- and I know her pretty well so I could tell she was excited about something -- was to tell me that her employer had held a site-wide drawing and she won. The prize? A Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer set. Top of the line. Now she can sell her present washer and dryer combination, bought used about six months ago, and use the proceeds to buy the new tires she needs for her car. And begin enjoying the luxury of a brand-new set of primo Whirlpool laundry appliances. I am so happy for her and I knew you would be too.

Recently I caught the last twenty minutes of one of my favorite classic movies, The Yearling (1946). It always makes me cry when adorable, passionate Jody (Claude Jarman, Jr.) returns home to his post-Civil War Florida pioneer-farmer parents after running off in a fit of hysteria upon the cruel but necessary death of his beloved pet fawn, Flag. "I been on the river," he tells his sick and worried father, Ezra (Gregory Peck). His mother, Orry (Jane Wyman), is still out searching for him, but before she returns, Jody and "Ezry" make plans for the future. They're going to work the land together and build a good life for their family. I like it when Ezra says to Jody: "I'd be proud to see the day when you got a well dug, so's no woman here'd be obliged to do her washin' on a seepage hillside. You willin'?"

That was one hundred years before my family did our washing on a screened-in back porch, shoving the clothes through wooden wringers and hanging the wet laundry on a line in the yard. Forty years later, my daughter has won herself a brand-new Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer set. When Audrey was growing up we had a chore chart; everybody pitched in with household duties. If she was ever enthusiastic about doing laundry, I've forgotten it. I'll bet that's about to change. But one thing never changes: parents always want their children to "have it better" than they had it. In late nineteenth-century Florida, the most a woman could hope for with regard to the task of clothes-washing was a well in her yard. I lived in an easier, albeit less simple, time and we used the laundromat and a wringer washer. Audrey lives in an America that gets scarier by the day, but she'll never have to do her washing on a seepage hillside or use a wringer. Who's got it better? I figure it's a wash.

Comments

[Deppfest]

I got wringer fingers too! They don't know they're born these days, do they?

[Jennifer]

Wringer fingers! LOL! Wish I'd said that!