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Those moments represent so much, I feel...I remember my mother doing various household chores as well.
posted by
FormerStudentIntern
on August 28, 2012 at 9:40 AM
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And those clothes always came out looking and smelling really clean. I love those good old days when things were much simpler.
posted by
shobana
on August 28, 2012 at 4:55 AM
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Really good Jay I guess those did seem like magic after wringing by hand
posted by
C_C_T
on August 27, 2012 at 11:30 PM
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I can feel this. I helped wash and we had no dryer and no basement, just a back yard. It was hard. We had more spare time then than now. I loved the tenderness you wove through this with such love. Glad you're home.
posted by
Justi
on August 27, 2012 at 9:33 PM
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Very vivid! I was especially surprised by the word "smashed!"
My memories are somewhat similar. Our kitchen sink in 2902 had an attached tub where mom did the laundry, scrubbing it on one of those old wood and metal washboards. I don't remember how she did the wringing. She probably just twisted it. That tub was also where she gave her little son and daughter a bath! The next step was dragging the tub of wet wash to the back window and clothespinning to the pulley wash line. Years later, the super put a Bendix washer (no dryer) in the basement. It worked with dimes. When done, we still had to dumbwaiter it five floors back to the apartment and hang it out the window or on the roof clotheslines - another flight of stairs. My God, I just remembered! She and dad even made their own soap from an old WW II homefront recipe - it cooled in quart-size cardboard milk containers. She stripped away the cardboard when the soap had become a solid block and then shredded it on a cheese-grater for the laundry. She said the result had a pleasantly coarse feel to it. As I recall, she was right. And it didn't smell very good either. Tough, tough people in those days!
posted by
2902
on August 27, 2012 at 3:10 PM
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The poem is heart-wrenching, as Wiley says. This is going to be some book!!
posted by
adnohr
on August 27, 2012 at 1:21 PM
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Times or tasks are little easier these days (or are they?). But certainly the introduction of washing machines as we know them today were a blessing to many mothers. I remember the exact day our family finally acquired one. I was an exciting day!
(No - I have not yet shown my husband the poem but it's his birthday this week and I was thinking of printing it out and framing it for him).
posted by
Troosha
on August 27, 2012 at 11:59 AM
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we had one of those as well....good poem utah
posted by
Annicita
on August 27, 2012 at 11:35 AM
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my Mother had a horrid old laundry on the farm off the back verandah
She had a copper boiler to boil the clothes and a wooden stick to lift them into the fist rinse, from there she put them through the hand ringer to the clean rinse. suppose it was the same.
posted by
Kabu
on August 27, 2012 at 11:05 AM
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UtahJay
Heart wrenching story my friend. Story of a miracle survivor of the past, well told.
posted by
WileyJohn
on August 27, 2012 at 10:55 AM
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