Gramma Had an Apron

Gramma has been on my mind a lot these days, as I try to emulate her in the care and feeding of chickens and the harvesting of small crops.  More than that, I recall the day to day doings and her constant busyness.
So here is Gramma.

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                                      GRAMMA HAD AN APRON FOR EVERY DAY

     My practical Gramma had an apron for every day of the week. There were special dressy ones for holidays, adorned and beribboned.

     Every morning she slipped into a home-made, loose-sleeved cotton print dress, then opened a large kitchen drawer. Inside, neatly starched, ironed and folded, was an array of bib aprons, plain, print or flowered, also home-made.  Some of the material was from printed flour sacks, often used by thrifty housewives to make aprons, napkins, even dresses.

     Gramma took the top apron, tied it around her ample waist and secured the bib across her equally ample bosom with two large safety pins. she might wear her dresses for two days, depending on what they had been through on any particular day, but the aprons were always fresh.

     Every day had its special chore. In the 1930s, and forever in Gramma's house, as in an old children's rhyme, it was Monday washing, Tuesday ironing, Wednesday sewing, Thursday baking, Friday cleaning, Saturday shopping, Sunday church.

     Let's concentrate on Monday. That was the day that Gramma indeed washed all day. On the service porch, annexed to the kitchen, a squat, white, electric washing machine sat on its three sturdy legs, anticipating the weekly loads. It boasted a wooden wringer, and rotated electrically as well. I don't remember when we got the "new" washer. Before I was school age we had one with a hand-turned wringer. I loved to pull the hot, squishy wet clothes through that implement while Gramma turned the handle.

     Now when I arrived home from school, the pungent smell of bleach, in a big pot of boiling water on the stove, assaulted my sinuses. Steam filled the kitchen. With the hem of her apron, Gramma wiped perspiration from her brow as she stirred the mess with a long-handled wooden paddle.

     No germ or stain dared remain on white socks, shirts, handkershiefs and napkins that swirled and twisted, rose and sank in that potent soup. Underwear received like treatment in a separate bath.

     When she deemed the contents sufficiently punished, Gramma lifted the whole thing with a pot holder, carried it to the service porch and ladled the offending items into the washer, ready with Rinso and more hot water.

     Severe agitation was what those dirty things required. Sometimes, before the bleach bath, heavier stains were rubbed with a vengeance, employing a pale brown bar of Fels-Naptha Soap. I saw and bought a bar recently. Why? Nostalgia? Perhaps if I get angry enough at some stubborn blotch that Oxy-Clean won't remove, I'll exorcise it with elbow grease.

     After a first rinse, Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing fortified the second rise. Those clothes were going to be white in spite of themselves. Sheets received like treatment, except that the bleach went into the washing machine, rather than the preliminary doings.

     Gramma usually sported bluish-white hair, too. She poured too much bluing into her shampoo rinse. Mrs. Stewart has survived to this day. Her bluing clears the water in my backyard bird bath. I'm boycotting the hair thing.

     Colored clothes usually endured an initial bath in the kitchen sink. The menacing tool for that chore was a funnel-shaped galvanized plunger on the end of a long wooden handle.  (I see they are making a comeback on websites advising the stocking of off-the-grid supplies for the coming calamities).  Her attack with that weapon was so ferocious, it seemed that she was trying to unclog the sink simultaneously. Fels-Naptha performed there sometimes, torturing the hapless clothes on a washboard. I wonder now if Gramma thought that the washing machine could not be trusted to clean by her standards.

     Whatever was to be starched got an extra pot-on-the-stove bath, too, with Linit powder mixed into the water. I marvel that clothing, so abused, lasted so long.

     All the clothes dried outside on long clotheslines, propped by forked wooden stakes to raise them sufficiently high for drying and lowered to pin on the clothes and to take them down. Remembering the unique aroma of clean clothes, dried in the fresh air, with a faint whiff of bleach in the whites and starch in shirts and napkins, makes my nose twitch every so slightly.

     I can see the kitchen in my mind, Gramma at the square, utilitarian table, folding what needed to be put away. On the same table she set a bowl of water, dipped in her hand and deftly sprinkled the Tuesday ironing. The newly dampened clothes were neatly rolled and put into a big pillowcase, ready for their next day's adventure.

     At the end of the day, after dinner and dishes, she sat down to darn a few clean socks before bedtime. Finally donning her flannel pajamas, home-made of course, she put her limp laundry-day dress, along with her Monday apron, into a large hamper for next week's wash. Tuesday would require a clean dress as well as a clean apron.

9/14/11