The Thanksgiving Challenge Post 17: All these New Conveniences Part 3

Every morning when I wake up, I lie in bed for a few minutes planning my day. I decide what major chore will take up the best part of the day, and what small things I can get accomplished simultaneously. I can remember my mother saying (in a rather sing songy way) "man must work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done." I never knew the truth of that statement until I was actually running a home of my own. I figured when I was in school that homework took up the majority of time, but I loved school and homework was no biggy. The last thing my mother always did was put in a load of laundry and while it washed the clothes, she washed the kitchen floor. Laundry always seemed to be the one job that we all disliked the most. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. But this is the same routine I follow and always have.

Now, Mama had a nice washer and dryer, a front loader both. Once when complaints about doing laundry were heard, she took us to visit our Aunt Florence Sellers on the Monday Wash Day and dropped us off. We loved Aunt Florence and Uncle May (not a typo, so no red pencils please) so visiting them was pure joy to us. Uncle May had a good sized bamboo field across from the house (they made the greatest fishing poles) and we liked to run thru the bamboo field, swinging the big stalks to the ground. If it was work, we didn't know it. But on this day, Aunt Florence was on the back porch, the big old wringer washing machine agitating the first load of clothes. She had a big tub on the bench next to the washer, and in it were white shirts soaking in a bleach solution. The scrub board lay next to the tub. We watched as the water was pumped out of the basin of the tub and she grabbed big water heavy work pants and fed them through the wringer to get as much of the water out as possible. This was time consuming back breaking work. Of course it beat taking the clothes down to the river to wash, but not by much. I am so thankful for my nice modern washer and dryer every single time I go back and revisit the memory of washing clothes with Aunt Florence.

This day, and I was probably about six years old, she asked me if I wanted to help. Of course I did. I was always game to try anything she might suggest. Climbing up on the bench so I could bend over and reach into the basin, I picked up a comparatively light article of clothing (I think it was a pair of her ginormous step- ins) and while trying to feed the cloth into the "mangle", promptly got my arm, (step-ins and all,) caught in the wringer. There was much wailing and screeching going on (and that was just Aunt Florence) and then Uncle May came running out on the porch. He reached over and unplugged the washer and disconnected the wringer somehow (he'd done that before. I could tell by the swift way he got me loose from the thing). I sat in his lap while he petted and prodded the arm and told me that it was going to be okay. Aunt Florence told me I was making a big thing out of it, but I could tell it had scared her, too. After all, my mother had left me in her care with two perfectly good arms and legs, it wouldn't do to return me any less perfect that I had arrived.

Oddly enough, when I'm telling this, I can see them both so clearly and even hear their voices, that funny little hitch in Uncle May's laughter, that high pitched voice of Aunt Florence's. The only other time that happens is when I think about the time Uncle May's mule kicked me. But that's another story all together, and I'll tell it another day.