Habits of cleanliness

Our mother had four children under six years old in the house (two more came some years later,) a wringer washer, but no clothes dryer or dishwasher. Frozen foods came later, so every meal took a lot of work to prepare. That was the situation of most women sixty years ago, the number and ages of the children were the only variables.

The world was divided into women's work and men's work. Our father was aware of the disparity, and would occasionally quote the old adage: “A man's work is from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done.”

After my last stint in Brazil I realized how difficult it is to keep a house without things like running hot water. At least in Brazil there is no -30 degree weather with a wind when clothes are put on the line. It might take two days for clothes to dry thoroughly in Brazil, but they never freeze into unmanageable pieces of ice to be wrestled into the house and left to freeze dry.

The two worlds were mutually exclusive in the days of wringer washers for the women and pitchforks for the men. With the overload of work our mother faced, it wasn't unusual that some chores occasionally went undone. There wasn't enough time in the day.

There were times when the dishes built up in the sink, and our father would announce that he was going to help by washing them. With him, the process was more a ceremony than a chore. He was systematic.

First, all the pieces had to be removed from the sink and organized in a certain way. That done, he filled the sinks with the hottest water possible and added laundry soap until the suds were a foot or two high.

The washing process was organized and thorough. Everything was aggressively scrubbed, rinsed, then put in the dryer rack just a certain way. He usually whistled softly to himself as he worked.

It was with the pots and frying pans where our father hit his stride. Following his Marine Corps training, the cast iron frying pans were scoured until they tried to shine. There was no such thing as a seasoned piece of cast iron cookware to him. He had spent four or five years in the Pacific during the war, and dysentery was always a threat, so sterility was important. We kids couldn't understand why the dogs didn't do a good enough job when they licked the dishes we sneaked to the floor for them. They looked clean to us.

The plates and such were all air dried, but anything made of cast iron was set on a red hot electric burner for the final step in the ritual. He left the frying pans on the stove forever, it seemed. One frying pan became so hot it split down the middle with a big bang. Our father was too much for it to stand up to, but the broken cookware was clean and dry, and that's what he wanted.

The dishes done, he scoured the sink until the enamel wore through. Then, with a sigh of work well done, he declared the dish world in order.

Once in an occasional while, our father swept either the kitchen or the living room. He was particular in his work, but only until it came to the dust pan part. Instead of finding the pan, he often swept the detritus into a corner of the room and left it there for later. I watched it happen so many occasions, I sometimes have to fight the urge to do the same thing if a dustpan isn't handy. It worked for him, and he lived until age 92.

When he got older and stayed more in the house, he washed a lot of clothes, just to have something to do. He put his cleverness to work with that chore also, adding various cleaning powders and solutions like a chef preparing a gourmet meal. When I visited him in the mornings, he often recounted the potion he had brewed the day before. Liquid dish soap was one of his favorites, and I use it occasionally.

His pickup was an avatar of preparedness, with handsaws, axes, chains, pieces of rope, all rolled, tied and stored in a military ammo box. His small collection of tools was clean and neat, and if anything went missing, it took only a day or two for him to notice its absence and start asking questions. On occasion he took everything from the truck, tidied it up, usually adding some other thing that he thought he might need in a future emergency that was sure to happen.

Like many of his generation, the years our father spent in the Pacific with the Marine Corps were the only extended time he spent a long distance from Helmville and the family ranch.

But he never forgot his training and maintained his family free of the dreaded dysentery until we went out on our own.