The ‘mangle’ and other household hazards

Back in ’49, chores were a heavier load

Here’s a tip for time travelling. The distance when travelling back is amazingly short.

I know this because, in our house, the appliances have become time machines. Recently a new washer and dryer were installed in the laundry room, and as I shut the house down for a night I wandered in to check that room. Both machines were running. There were enough LEDs (light-emitting diodes) winking on and off to make the room look like the command centre on a space station — or a time machine.

The familiar slurp-slurp of the washing machine threw me back to my 1949 home in Northern Ontario. On wash day a big-wheeled wringer washer was rolled into the kitchen.

Construction crews were installing water and sewer lines but they hadn’t reached us yet. The home didn’t have plumbing. My job was to haul water. It was about 100 metres to the water source, and it was easier to carry two pails than one. Counterbalance.

The water from many trips was poured into a round washtub on the kitchen woodstove.

When hot, it was bailed into the washing machine. Clothes were added and the agitator started slurping. While the load was washing, I kept hauling water. I was between 10 and 12, and pretended I was a slave building a pyramid.

When the clothes were washed, the wringer mounted above the tub was swung into place. Its two powerful rollers, the “mangle,” would squeeze the water out of the clothes and back into the tub. It was called a mangle, I was told, because that’s what it would do to your arm if you got careless. When the water was deemed dirty, I drained it into my pails and carried it about 50 metres to a field behind the house and dumped it. I remember conversation and laughter. It was a time I had my mother to myself.

With my mind firmly in a past laundry day, and my physical self in 2013, I kept shutting down the house. After I turned off the lights in the home office, I paused to marvel at the sea of blinking LEDs I’ve become so used to that I don’t really see them anymore. I sat in the dark and thought back to the kitchen table I did homework at. My olfactory memory fished up the smell of oilcloth. No matter how old it gets, it keeps its smell.

Shutting down the home of my childhood was another chore. My father was a railroader and would be gone for days. On a cold night now, setting temperature involves turning down the thermostat — more little lights. In the world that doesn’t seem that far back, it was a chore. Coal scuttles — large pails with snouts for pouring coal, were needed. First step was to “shake” the stoves.

I was in charge of a chemical toilet that I had to carry to the outhouse every morning to dump and clean. I wasn’t allowed to use it. Ladies only.

A handle was attached to grates, and they were cranked to pull the ashes down into a metal box. The ashes had to be dumped.

Two loaded scuttles, weighing about the same as water pails, were carried up from the basement. One went into the kitchen range and the other into the Quebec heater in the living room. By adjusting a series of vents, the stoves would be “damped down.” They would burn slowly. The scuttles were left full of coal, one at each stove. On cracking cold nights I would hear the clank of stove lids and the slide of coal as somebody topped up the fires.

Saturday night baths were in the washtub on the kitchen floor. I had to haul and heat the water, and my two sisters used the water first.

I was in charge of a chemical toilet that I had to carry to the outhouse every morning to dump and clean. I wasn’t allowed to use it. Ladies only.

Dishwasher lights took me back to the old kitchen sink. Another chore was to mercilessly tease my big sister. She was washing and I was drying. I had her. She was on the verge of a blow-up. She reached for a milk bottle, and I thought she was going to wash it. I woke up on the floor with my father holding a cold cloth to my head. He offered advice, not sympathy. “Either learn when to shut up — or learn to duck.”

I wouldn’t trade or change those years, nor would I give up the machines we now take so much for granted.