Oh, Sheet!

Monday was the traditional wash (pronounced warsh in my St. Louis area dialect) day years ago. Now, wash day can be any day and is sometimes every day. I don’t mind the ordinary laundry, but washing sheets, my task today, is a pain. In the really old days, women would gather at the local watering hole and beat the clothes on rocks. I guess I could still do this in the ditch in our back yard after a good rain. Later, women used lye soap and scrub boards which left raw knuckles. In my younger years, we’d power on the wringer washer in the basement and fill the rinse tubs with water. My father wanted to get an automatic washer and dryer, but my mother would not even entertain the thought. Until she was about 90 years old, this method was good enough for her. Before the advent of dryers, everyone had clotheslines. The ropes had to be strung in the back yard and then elevated with poles so the clothes wouldn’t drag on the ground. The back yard clotheslines were a breeding ground for town gossip among the women of the neighborhood, but the kids were more interested in checking out the underwear. We knew what kind of underwear everyone wore, and we also knew how often they changed by counting the number displayed. The sheets were always white, and there was a special pride in the intensity of whiteness. During the cherry and blackberry seasons, the sheets had polka dots after the birds flew over. Now, I launder the sheets in the privacy of my home without company, gossip, or birds. Making life easier can also make it more boring!