Doing Laundry in the Basement

It’s safe to say that the inside of 828 Spruce Street was Mom’s turf. The basement was the exception, though, for it had Dad’s workbench and the place where he cut our (boys only) hair. But in the early years, it was also used by Mom for doing laundry.

When they bought the house in 1950, the basement was divided into two work spaces. Dad’s workbench was in the southeast corner and Mom’s wringer washer was in the northwest corner. A monstrous “Octopus” coal furnace occupied the center of the basement. It was monstrous because it made the basement scary when I was young. It seemed dangerous – Dad forbade any of us kids to play with it. But it was something besides creepy, it was a great help in drying laundry when it was winter at 828.

The other laundry equipment consisted of a galvanized double sink and wringer washer. There was an inside clothesline (which was only used in rainy or really cold weather) strung throughout the northern end of the basement. Monday was laundry day at 828. At four am Monday mornings, Mom would rise to begin the laundry. She was in the basement much of the morning. Before automatics, a ringer washer had to be filled “by hand” with a hose. Mom had to watch this process because there was no automatic shut-off. She first added hot water and then Dad’s homemade soap, which she dissolved with some sort of wooden stirrer. She then added the clothes and finished filling the washer with cooler water.

Dad made the soap from animal grease/fat that he obtained from various sources. The process was complicated and somewhat dangerous, because we kids weren’t allowed in the basement when he was making it, not even to watch. First he’d heat the fat to dissolve it and then strained it through a cloth to remove any solids He would then dissolve the lye in hot water and allow it to cool. When both mixtures were at room temperatures, he combined them, added salt (and maybe something else) and poured the mixture into a flat pan to solidify. After it hardened, he’d cut it into thick bars and then he, or more often one of us kids, would shred the soap blocks with a grater. The flakes made the soap easier to dissolve.

Mom used this homemade soap for dollar-stretching reasons, but she swore by it, saying that it cleaned better than anything else, especially whites.

Mom’s wringer washer had one automatic feature, that of agitating the clothes. While in this cycle she had a free period to do other Mom stuff, which usually meant going upstairs to the kitchen. But she was soon back in the basement to drain the soapy water and fill the tub again with rinse water. While that agitated, she had another free period,  but was soon back downstairs to drain the rinse water.

A kid was required for the next step, wringing the water out of the clothes. Mom always operated the business side of the wringer, for she never wanted us kids to put our little fingers into the wringer. Our job was to grab the item as it came through the wringer and put it in a bushel basket. I never minded this job – it was a chance to work with Mom alone.

I didn’t get to do this for long, though. Dad and Mom purchased an automatic washer sometime in the mid-1950s, and it was installed in a corner of the dining room, which was next to the kitchen. With so many pregnancies, Mom had varicose veins at an early age, and the multiple trips to and from the basement on Mondays took a toll on her legs.

I usually think that I learned my work skills from watching Dad at his workbench. But I also know that watching Mom do laundry gave me an opportunity to learn efficiency and watch energy in action. These are good skills to have today.

But…there is a “but” in this story that has to do with overdoing this work, work, work business. Let’s save that for later.

--Bob

A Legacy of Kindness

Arriving home from school one evening, my wife Julie told me that Gordon Liddle stopped over to drop off something. Gordon is our friend of many years; we were married on his farm just outside of Winchester, Kentucky, nearly thirty years ago. Eighty-nine years old, Gordon has a propensity for conversations about engaging topics, but it is difficult to get daily tasks finished when he visits.

 Julie told me she did a “Frank Sextro” when Gordon visited. The comparison immediately resonated to my Uncle Frank, dad’s brother-in-law. In my youth, about every two weeks during good weather, Frank would walk the half mile from his house on Campbell Avenue to 828 carrying two-quart Sanka coffee jars filled with bacon grease, the not-so-secret ingredient in mom’s renowned doughnuts, which she handed out as Halloween treats, Dad also used the grease to make the lye soap mom used to do laundry.

 Frank would also come to read The Sidney Daily News and visit. Frank was older and very methodical and deliberate in manner and speech, and these loving but time-consuming traits often conflicted with mom’s get-it-done-now mentality. So when he arrived, she would quickly find one of those daily tasks—like ironing or stringing beans—that she could do during Uncle Frank’s stopover. Growing up, I remember being disappointed in mom for thinking she always had to complete a job instead of just sitting and talking. 

That was then, but now I see mom’s action in a different light. Mom’s military-like focus on completing tasks was coupled with the equally intrinsic value of being kind to one’s neighbors. I am sure that Frank appreciated mom’s taking moments from her busy day to help Frank fill a void in his.

This helping one’s neighbors is a decency that plays out often in my life today. Either Julie or I go out every morning and walk down the street and throw the morning paper on one of our 85-year-old neighbor’s porch. Doing this simple task, I am reminded of that kind spirit of “doing for others” that our parents instilled in us through word and deed. 

Mother often cloaked these good deeds in “fun” activities for the six youngest Kerber boys, of which I am the third oldest. (I am pretty sure that mom figured out how to raise boys efficiently and uniformly by the time I came around.) As tasks were distributed on cold wintry mornings, we boys would position ourselves to be picked for the coveted job of shoveling the neighbors’ walks. We would start with Millett’s, our across-the-street neighbor, and shovel a path through the neighborhood, to three or four other older neighbors. We would make a game of our labor, having snowball fights and tackling each other in the mounds of snow we shoveled. Little did we boys know that we were tools of a higher calling, that of helping others who could not easily manage the job themselves. 

As I write this today, I am sure that mom had several different motives for making us boys the neighborhood snowplows—e.g. boys outside meant fewer boys inside under foot. But those other reasons have melted away through the years. This past winter as I was shoveling our neighbors’ walks here in Kentucky, I realized that I was living part of mom’s legacy, that no matter how busy our lives, there is always time to be kind to your neighbor. I not only do these tasks with a good feeling inside, but I also thank mom while I am doing them.

 

 

 

Fred is the first Kerber sibling to be a guest blogger for 828. The ninth-born (or, as is sometimes said, the third oldest of the six youngest), he lives with his wife Julie in Winchester, Kentucky; they have two college-age daughters, Maggie and Cora. Fred is semi-retired now but continues to teach English two days a week at at George Rogers Clark High School in Winchester, where he’s taught for the past twenty years, and Julie works as a massage therapist.