She Spit On Her Iron

I was talking about my mother the other day and how hard she worked when I was a little girl. I was some of the hard work she encountered. I was telling a new friend how I got to stomp my little brother's diapers in a wash tub. Oh, I am so sure she wanted to do it herself. It would have been so much faster, but she let me "help". She always washed clothes on Mondays. She ironed on Tuesdays and baked on Fridays and Saturdays. She somehow fit in all of her other duties like cooking, gardening, canning, and plucking chickens on the other days.

The picture that you see is similar to my mother's. My mother's however, was smooth with age and use. The corners of the boards were round. I don't know if it was made that way, or from many loads of laundry.  It smelled of homemade lye soap. I can almost smell it in my mind's eye today.

I can see my mom with a wet rag washing down the wire clothesline. Then she would put a clothespin bag on the line. Then the fruit of her labor was the basket after basket of wet clothes she carried outside. She would put the basket on the ground, grab a lot (in my little girl mind) of clothespins and put them in her mouth. One by one she would hang out the sheets, pillow cases and the rest of the white clothes. On and on it went until the overalls were finally on the line to dry.

 Our uncle lived with us. His pants were put on metal stretchers and then hung on the line. They gave his pants a nice crease. Which was funny because he owned a mill and ground feed for farmers. Of course, he came home white with flour dust everyday, but he did start his day out looking good. Some stores still sell these for about thirty dollars a pair. I couldn't find the cost in the forties, but I'm sure it was nowhere near that amount.

When the clothes were dry mother would bring them in the house to sprinkle. My little girl mind couldn't grasp this concept. She got them dry just to get them wet again.
She had a dish with warm water in it. She would spread out the shirt or whatever she was going to iron on the kitchen table, then she would shake the warm water on it. Then she rolled them all up tight and put the clothes one by one in the laundry basket. Then the next day, being Tuesday, she would iron them all.
The one thing I never got to do was spit on my finger and test the iron to see if it was hot. She always said I might burn myself so that was her job.

I had a tiny little ironing board and a tiny little iron that I just now remembered. It would barely get warm, but I was allowed to iron my daddy's hankies; not the sparkly white ones for church, but the everyday red and blue ones for work.

When I look at the picture above I just grin to  myself. Her ironing board was wooden. The cover on it she made herself out of old sheets and large safety pins. There were scorch marks on it, and even a hole or two. She must have been interrupted a time or eight on laundry day.