Yesterday, Monday, we did
the wash. We sorted the line-dried clothes, put away the things that don’t need
to be ironed, re-made the beds with sweet-smelling sheets, and set aside the
things we would iron today.
Now that breakfast is over and Dad has gone to the fields, we wash and dry the breakfast dishes, separately
wash and scald the many parts of the cream separator, fill a bottle with water
for sprinkling the ironing, and put a sprinkler stopper in the bottle.
My job was to take the pieces to be ironed from the bushel basket, lay them on the Formica kitchen table, sprinkle them with
water, and roll them up. As I sprinkle the handkerchiefs I place them in a pile and, when all are sprinkled, roll them into a
cylinder. Starched shirt collars and cuffs get a liberal sprinkling, as do the
hems of pillowcases. All of the pieces are heaped on the kitchen table and
covered with a dry tea towel.
Now there’s time to make
the beds, bring up the ironing board from its perch on the basement landing,
and plug in the electric iron, a wonderful advance for the homemaker.
I, being a mere child, am
not allowed to iron complicated things such as white shirts, work clothes, or
women’s dresses. That is the province of my mother and grandmother, but when
it’s time to iron the flat stuff – table cloths Ugh!), pillowcases, and
handkerchiefs, I take over. I turn on the radio and tune in to a Kansas City
Blues baseball game and iron away, imagining home-run balls flying over the
fence.
Copyright
2014 by Shirley Domer
No comments:
Post a Comment