Chafing Over the Ironing

Remember starch? I don't know if it's even made anymore. Clothes are all permanent press now. Wash them, dry them, hang them up, and the wrinkles are gone. Back in the day when I was young that wasn't so. You wanted to get wrinkles out, you ironed.

I began doing laundry when I was in grade school. I may have been eight, nine, or perhaps ten. With older siblings it wasn't so necessary that I learn these things - except to my older siblings. They're the ones who taught me.

We had an old ringer washer. The image to the right is probably as close to what it looked like as anything. The black hose was used to drain the thing. Made for quite a mess. In the summer time we brought the washing machine outside and washed there. Then, when the laundry was done, we would drop the hose and let the water run into the ground. Yeah, not exactly ecologically sound.

The tubs were filled manually. We would run a short hose from the faucet to the tub and turn on the hot water. When the washing tub was full of soap and water the clothes would be added and the wash cycle engaged. There was no rinse cycle. That was where the wringer came into use.

Next to the washing machine there would be a wash tub. Couldn't find a good image of one that looked like what we used. The closest was what I have displayed. Only ours didn't have the cool scrubbing board. I think we may have had a scrubbing board, but it was as rusty as the tub.

Well, when the washing was done, you would take the clean clothes out of the water and begin running them through the wringer. If you let the next article of clothing rest on the previous, the conveyor would pull them through. The dirty water would fall back into the machine and the "clean" clothes would fall into the clear, hot water in the wash tub.

If you were good, you could actually send more than one article of clothing through at a time. But you had to be careful. The wringer sometimes would jam. Then you had to pop up the top (see the big handle?) pull the clothes back and do it again.

Feeding clothes into the ringer was a bit of a risk. If you weren't careful, you'd get your fingers pinched. And, if your name happened to be Judayl, before your pain sensors told you that you were in trouble, your entire hand and wrist would be pulled through. It wouldn't take your arm. That was too thick and the wringer would jam. Whenever Judayl helped with the laundry you could count on this happening. In fact, I believe it happened to all my siblings at least once, except for Ranlen (who was up north) and Helvie (who never had to do laundry like this). It never happened to me either, although I did get my fingers pinched a few times.

Once the clothes soaked in the hot clean water they would be sent through the wringer again. This time, instead of letting the clothes fall, you had to catch them and put them in the wicker baskets (not plastic) to be brought to the clotheslines.

Washing in the winter wasn't just a bother. It was a great bother. For one thing, there was draining the water. The washtub took two people to bring it to the bathroom where it was unceromoniously dumped into the bathtub. (Just made you feel like jumping in and taking a bath to see the brown water sloshing about.) The washing machine was either scooped out the top a little at a time, and then the dirty water poured into the sink. Or, the side hose was let down so the water could drain into the washtub, and then two people had to carry it to the bathroom. (If you thought dumping the rinse water was bad, you should have seen this.) This was done twice or more times.

Hanging out the clothes was another matter in winter. If it was a nice day we hung them outside. They didn't dry. They froze. Then we would bring them inside and beat the ice off them. They were still damp and had to be draped over furniture to finish drying. If the day was poor, we hung them around the house on wires stretched across rooms. This was highly inconvenient. You would walk through the room and either get slapped in the face by some dangling article of clothing (hopefully not Daddy's long johns), or at least get dripped on.

I remember when Daddy had sprung for a new sofa for Mother at Christmas. The rule was, no one could sit on the sofa. (People come up with the strangest rules. What's the point of having a sofa if no one sits on it?) Well, we had just brought in the clothes and they were frozen. This meant they could be positioned. So Daddy and Mickey set up their pants and shirts on the sofa. Then they went behind and kneeled down so only their heads showed. Mother came walking down the hall, saw them, and exploded in wrath. By the time she got into the living room she saw it was a joke and then everyone laughed at her. This only made her more angry. That was when Daddy told her that her rule was kind of stupid.

So, back to starch. That was using in ironing. I hated ironing. Some things really s*cked to iron. Remember pleated skirts? Things with ruffles. Stocking were easy. So were cotton t-shirts. Sheets would have been, except they were so big. But ironing was also a way to get revenge.

Remember how I wrote in an earlier post how my older sisters (and Helvie, too) would frequently beat on me? Well, I wasn't big enough to win back for a good many years. But once I was given the job of ironing, I found a way. You see, we washed all the clothes, of course. We also ironed all the clothes. Everything that could be ironed, was ironed. Shirts. Blouses. Dresses. Stockings. Pants. Shorts. Skirts. Underwear.

If you use the right amount of starch, clothes will stand up on their own even when they're not frozen. I found that out by accident one day. After that, I would do it on purpose - when one or more of my sisters had thrashed me soundly. Put those on and tell me how you like it. Of course, that usually resulted in another beating.

It was worth it.