Upside Down

Today, Christine noticed that the 'air flow restricted' light was flashing on our dryer downstairs. Envisioning a potential fire hazard, she brought down the Dyson vacuum cleaner and did her best to suck every little dust ball from the area.

She pulled the dyer forward, hopped up and over the dryer to pull the vacuum behind the machine to get to the vent hose and any dust back in that area. She tilted the dryer foward to ensure there was not a scrap of dust under or visible in the machine workings. She was diligent and the area was sucked clean in a flash. Replugging and rearranging the machine, she turned it on to see if the warning light had stopped flashing.
Nope.

She opened up the front door, put the vacuum attachment, you know - the long skinny narrow edger thingy -- and poked around everywhere looking for that last clump of dryer lint hiding somewhere where the machine could sense it. She retested for flashing warnings.

Yup. It was still flashing.

There were no more dust clumps. There must obviously be a warning light reset button somewhere, but it will take a technician to come and fix it now. We know there won't be a fire caused by dryer lint, that is for sure.

This got me thinking of the story of my mother and my grandmother and dryers.

When my mother married my father, she was young and a sort of beauty queen in her social circle. She kept long red nails and fresh lipstick at all times. After she was married, when my father took her up to the ranch to live she had to face the drudgery of housewifery. This included sweeping, cooking, washing dishes and ... washing clothes.

Holding the basket of dirty clothes, she asked my grandfather where the washing machine was. He chuckled and told her that the washhouse was the shed by the driveway. She carried the basket outside and opened up the shed door. The inside was covered in spiders and she screamed, dropped the basket and ran back into the house, convinced that she had disturbed a nest of poisonous black widow spiders.

Waving her red-nailed fingers in front of my grandfather she told him that she was not going to break her nails handwashing clothes in that stone sink. She would not fill that sink with buckets carried by hand from the water pump in the yard. She was not going to put her hands in borax or lye, she was not going to tote water in pails to heat in the wood buring vat in the shed and she was not going into the shed until all the spiders and their webs had been cleaned out -- by somebody else.

Taking pity on her, my grandfather drove off, he stopped and talked to the ranch foreman and then took off down the road in the GMC (The Jimmie) pickup truck.

The foreman came up to the house with his toolbox and a bag of electrical parts and a coil of electrical cable. He set up a new circuit in the breaker box hanging on the side of the ranch house porch wall. He ran the cable up a galvanized pipe on the side of the wall to the service head on the roof of the house and then up to a pole by the clothes line in the side yard.

He used a cone shaped glass insulator and mounted the cable to the side of the pole. Then he continued to hang the cable to the washhouse. He had another glass insulator that he mounted on the roof of the washhouse. He had some long nail like things that had a loop on the end. He nailed them in, wrapped the loop with black electrical friction tape and then threaded the electrical cable through the loop. This kept the cable from touching the side of the washhouse.

He cut a small hole into the side of the washhouse wall and threaded the cable into it.

He opened up the washhouse door and taking a broom swept, out the cobwebs and sent the spiders flying along with clouds of years old dust.

By the time he had the washhouse cleaned and an electrical receptical mounted on the inside wall of the washhouse, my grandfather was back with the new washing machine and mangler.

It was a top loading machine that had two cycles - wash and spin. It did not heat the water, so my grandfather pulled out the copper vat with the wood box that was used for heating wash water. He bought an electric water pump for the well, layed water pipes from the well to the wash house, and tied the pipes into the pipes for the house. He bought a gas water heater for the wash house and layed gas pipes all along the ditch from the foreman's office area all the way up to the ranch house.

My grandmother Julia had refused to live in the ranch house and had moved into a house in town many years before. My grandfather had continued to use the ranch house as an office and a place where he ate lunch and napped in the afternoons. It had a rural telephone out on the porch, an indoor flushing toilet, and running water in the kitchen. It was heated by a large fireplace in the living room and all in all, the whole set up was pretty primative.

Many years later, my mother told me this story, wiggling her fingers, just as she had done as a young girl so long ago. She said that red-nails got that ranch house up dated with hot water and electrical appliances. But she still had to hang wet clothes on a clothes line to dry until the early fifties when my stepfather bought her a matched set of front loading Bendix washing machine and dryer.

My grandmother never had a dryer. She always hung her clothes to dry on a clothes line in her backyard in Burbank, CA.

My grandmother always kept her washing machine immaculate. No swipe of dirt or dust was allowed. She kept a rag in the wash sink next to her washing machine in her garage. She would load the washing machine, turn it on and then wipe down the machine before she left the garage. She always did her wash on Mondays and she did her ironing on Tuesdays.

After her nap on Monday afternoon she would go out and hang her washed clothes on the line. Then she would go into the house, fix a glass of ice water, pull up her dining room shade on the window facing the front of her house and sit down and work on her daily crossword puzzle.

She had an agreement with her neighbor May who lived across the street. If my grandmother's shade was not up when May came home from work, May would come over to see what was going on.

At about five, my grandmother would go out and take the clothes off the line, replacing the wooden pins in a striped denim bag that hung on the line. She would fill two baskets. One basket held clothes to be folded up and put away and the other held clothes to be ironed.

She would stack the baskets and carry them into the house. Fold the clothes on the dining room table, and put the clothes to be ironed on the counter in the kitchen. After she had put away all the folded clothes (sheets, towels, underwear, etc.) she would go into the kitchen. She would spread each garment out on the counter and taking her hand place it under the running water in the sink and then snap her hand along the dried clothing, spraying drops of water along the garment. When it was thoroughly dampened, she would roll up the garment and place it in the freezer of her refrigerator.

The next day, she would set up the ironing board in front of the TV in the living room, fill the washing basket with the frozen garments and take them into the iron. She would spend several hours watching her morning game shows and ironing.

One Monday, May came home and found the dining room shade was still pulled down across the street. When my grandmother did not answer the front door, May unlocked the driveway gate and went around to the back of the house. She found my grandmother dead under the clothes line, the combination of the September heat and her bad heart did her in as she was taking clothes off the line.

When I was a young married wife in the early 60s, washing machines never died. They lasted for years and years and were passed down from generation to generation. I was given my mother-in-laws old Kenmore heavy duty washing machine when she wanted to upgrade. I hung my clothes on a clothes line contraption that sat in a concrete hole in the ground and twirled around.

It could fold up wards into a cocoon of rope and light weight galvanized metal prongs and you could pull it up and store it in your garage if you were going to have a backyard luncheon for the ladies and you did not want them to see your unsightly laundry lines.

Naturally, all the hand-me-down washing machines died on me. Generally, the dial on the timers would wear out their points and the washing machine would not know when to stop washing and when to start spinning. Wiggling red painted nails never got me any relief. So I would have to trudge to the laundromat with dirty clothes for months.

I finally learned a trick to get a resolution. I made my husband do it on Sunday afternoons when the football games were on TV. After a few times of doing that, he either bought a new used machine or talked his mother into going around to lawn sales and buying one for us.

The first new machine I ever had was a combination washer-dryer stack I bought for my first apartment after I got divorced in 1988. I became partial to the Kenmore brand since they seemed to have a long lifetime without failure, and Sears had a large parts warehouse and technicians that could fix things.

Neither Christine nor I have long red finger nails, so the laundry machines are dependent on us to keep them clean and functioning. And perhaps, that five-years maintenance contract I bought?