Another Day in the Country
What day is this?
© Another Day in the Country
For some reason or another, Monday felt like Sunday this week, and I was literally halfway through the day, thinking it was Sunday and I had all the time in the world to do as I pleased, when I realized it actually was Monday, which is the absolute deadline for getting my column in for printing.
Perhaps it is repetition that gives us expectations for a particular day of the week to feel unique.
This week, I got a letter from my grandson, who told me about a laundry dilemma. On a college campus, everyone evidently wants to do laundry on the weekend. Even if he gets his clothes washed on Saturday or Sunday, dryer space is at a premium all weekend long.
“So, Baba,” he asked, “what day do you do laundry? I’m doing mine now on Thursdays.”
Evidently the laundry room at Cal Poly is pretty much vacant on weekdays, which got me to thinking about whether I have a laundry day.
I don’t.
I was raised to believe that Monday was laundry day.
If you are past retirement age, I’m sure you remember flour sacks that were made into dish towels, embellished with embroidery, and given to girls for their hope chests.
Those little squares of cotton were indoctrination into a culture.
The premier towels were a set of seven with figures accompanying each day of the week to tell the prospective young housewife what to do on each day. Friday was for cleaning; Saturday, for baking; Sunday, of course, for going to church.
In my family, since we went to church on Saturday, we were immediately out of sync with society at large. So, for me, days were up for grabs.
In my childhood, Monday was always the day Mom and Gramm did the laundry.
When I stopped to explain to my grandson that during my growing-up years laundry was a much bigger deal than it is now, I said, “For starters, all the clothes were washed in the same water.”
I could feel him cringe.
Then, I had to back track and explain what a Maytag wringer washer was and all the work that entailed with two tubs of rinse water (one with bluing added) and all the sloshing and wringing occurring until the first load was in the laundry basket (a wooden fruit basket, hopefully lined with a handmade cloth liner — sometimes with more embroidery on the edges and stocked with clothespins.)
That’s a lot of mishmash for an 18-year-old, even if his mother did teach him to do his own laundry while he still lived at home.
My mother also had a clothespin bag made from a sturdy hanger that I sometimes left hanging on the clothesline after all the wash had been brought in, much to mother’s horror because the wind might blow it off the line.
I’d have to retrieve pins from around the yard, and they’d get dirty. The potential hazard was high, and now I’m explaining pins to my grandchild.
Which ones are best? Tonight, on “Who Cares?”
I still love to hang sheets and pillowcases on a clothesline over at the Ramona House, but it is seldom a necessity for drying clothes.
It’s a romantic, nostalgic idea along with the hope that wind irons the sheets as they flap and fills them with whatever lovely scent is predominant in the air. I think it’s a delicious treat to sleep in sheets fresh off the line.
Back in the day, you didn’t just throw something in the wash, as we do today. Doing laundry took the better part of a day.
I remember Dad telling me stories about his mother doing laundry in a wash house beside the windmill. They heated water in a big wash tub. When Gramm got her first machine, 6-year-old Laurel pulled a lever back and forth to provide the agitator action.
He dreaded laundry day. In contrast, I liked doing laundry — even in the days when a wringer washing machine was standard equipment.
I, too, turned out to be an agitator in the family, but not the kind used for washing clothes. I just asked too many questions.
When I was in college, I went to school in the same town where my Ehrhardt grandparents lived. Gramm now had chosen Sunday as her laundry day.
“I’ll come pick you up on Sunday morning,” my grandma offered. “You bring your dirty clothes, and we’ll do the wash together.”
And that’s how it was for my college years. Gramm still used a Maytag wringer washing machine. I’d sort the clothes while she filled the washer and its two tubs with water, and we’d begin washing clothes while I plied her with questions about what it was like when she was spending her days in the country.