Wash day is always Monday
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
It happens every week. I don't need a calendar to tell me what day it is. At the Sondergard home, there's wash on the line. It's Monday!
Yes, I know, this is the day and age of automatic dryers; however on 4th Street there are shirts and sheets flapping on the clothesline.
I, too, enjoy hanging things out to dry in the Kansas breeze. There's just something about a line full of clothes that fascinating.
"I get a lot of enjoyment out of being out there, early in the morning, all by myself daydreaming while I hang the clothes," says Darlene. "I wash on Mondays because it's traditional," she says with a chuckle.
Darlene hangs her laundry out the way my grandmother used to do it — orderly! And she does this all year 'round. All the sheets with matching edges, followed by the pillowcases. All the shirts in a row with their relatives.
"When I do clothes I hang all of his together and all of mine," she says and she does graduated sizing as well.
First comes bath towels marching past, then hand towels, and finally wash clothes bringing up the tail end as if they were playing Crack the Whip in the wind.
My grandmother did it this way and my mother taught me to do the same! Woe be unto the one who hung things randomly.
My Grandma Ehrhardt also had a strict sequence for washing clothes. Her separating technique took in more than lights and darks.
First came white sheets and dishtowels — the kind of thing that doesn't get heavily soiled. If you had a light load you could add white shirts to that mix but never underwear!
Then came men's underwear (which got bleached to within an inch of their lives), then light clothes, dark clothes, finally at the tail end came overalls and jeans — work clothes.
There was good reasoning behind all of this because in those days Gramm was still washing with ONE washing machine full of water and two (sometimes three) tubs full of rinse water including the last tub that had bluing in it.
If by chance, someone younger than 40 is reading this column they are probably going to wonder what the heck is bluing?
While we're at it, Grandma washed with one kind of soap — the kind she made herself out of fat and lye. Now the myriad brands of detergent, bleaches, laundry softeners, and enhancers boggles the mind.
There's Tide, Gain, Dreft (oops is that one gone, too?), All, Cheer, Sun, Oxydol, Ivory Flakes made for special niches that are for cold water or warm. Grandma used HOT! And she had the whitest clothes in town.
You've got to have a clothesline, straight and taunt to show off all the laundry.
"I always washed my nicest things by hand," says my friend Paula, "and hung them on the line to dry — that is when I still HAD a line," she says this with that certain look in her eye. "Warren took my old one down and promised me a new one," she raises her eyebrows and is quiet for a moment, "the one we bought just didn't work right so we took it back and," she shrugs, "no line! I miss it!"
Okay, Santa, here's the hot tip, "Bring that lady a clothesline!" In every culture, there's a clothes drying technique.
In Singapore, I was fascinated by a jillion long poles jutting out from high rise apartment windows with laundry flapping from them — on Monday! In Mexico, clothes are hung on lines strung haphazardly between trees in faltering shade. In India, saris flutter from second story verandahs like yards and yards of bright colored ribbon.
In every country, I snapped pictures of laundry lines, but none fascinate me quite so much as Kansas clotheslines.
I even have a picture of my neighbor Eric's laundry. One complete ensemble hanging in a row — overalls, shirt, underwear, red handkerchief, and socks against a blue, blue sky.
My automatic dryer asks too many questions. Give me a break! I'll just put these sheets out on the line and the wind will silently whip them so smooth you'll think they were ironed. And the smell is heavenly!
It's another day in the country and you can just call me old fashioned.
