When I was little Monday was the day for washing, my mum would get out the washing machine. She was posh like Eunice Price next door, they both had Hoovermatic twin tubs with *spin dryers* rather then a finger crunching mangle. Admittedly both machines seemed to spend more time leaking from perished rubber hoses rather then actual washing but it was modern.
The water would be boiled in the washing tub, together with the soap powder (or even new fangled detergent) and I'll always remember the clothes swirling in that steaming water(very like Go'ulds waiting to be implanted now I think of it) to be hooked out with wooden washing tongs bleached white with use.
The clothes would then be slurped out into the said spin drier which would then propel the machine around the kitchen with such violence it would terrify me. IF you were lucky the water would be spat from the curious shepherds crook shaped pipe into the sink. If you were not the machine would have developed another leak and it would be all over the floor.
The whole house would be steamy and smell of boiling soap powder and wet clothes.
I hated Mondays.
Which is why I always do the washing on a Sunday even though, lets face it chucking washing in the machine dirty and dry and getting it out again clean and dry isn't *quite* the same challenge. .
I seemed to spend the rest of the day putting junk (sorry treasures) on eBay to sell, I've been putting it off for ages so this will be a Sunday job for weeks and months.
That's what this post was going to be about, but I seem to have gone off at a tangent..
Sometimes the tangents yield the best stories. My brother and I used Mom's mangle to flatten stuff that should not have been flat.
ReplyDeleteWayne, assuming it's not horrible (!) I'd love to hear more about that :-)
ReplyDeleteSee I never thought of stuff like that...
My mother used to have an old wringer washer in the basement. It was a large tub on legs with an agitator and the wringer attachment on top. After the clothes were clean enough, she'd pop them through the wringer into another tub filled with clean water. Rinse. Repeat wringer action. Then hang them outside to dry.
ReplyDeleteMy god - it was a process. But I did enjoy the smell. The whole house smelled clean and fresh. Unlike today, were you can hardly smell the laundry at all with all the unscented products.
My mum had one of those earlier wringer types too. She used to always scare me to bits, saying keep your fingers away, or they'll be mangled to nothing....
ReplyDeleteI liked the smell of the washing powders (persil), but hated thinking I would be helping with all the ironing, for the next two days...
Graham, I am so glad you reconsidered and will continue posting. You are worth reading!
ReplyDeleteJane in Alabama
She had a couple of big aluminum pots that my brother and I ran through the Mangle to flatten so we could use them as shields we cut each one so that when flattened they made a X shaped shield. We played King Authur and his knights plus cowboys and indians.
ReplyDeleteWe also ran milkweed plants through the Mangle to extract the milk which yielded a poor kind of natural rubber that we then used to make masks.
She was not happy and Dad was amazed.