Repeating Cycles

Since humans first walked this planet, cycles have connected their pasts, presents, and futures to intrigue and inspire them. All cultures have revered rotations of days, months, and seasons as well as life through death progressions. Those sequences fascinate Homo sapiens enough to make them search for them in odd places. Folks who track history and have internet access report that modern marketers are repeating old traditions.

A decade ago, I edited an uncle’s biography. His story caught my interest when I discovered grocery stores operated very differently than they did during my early adulthood. During his early life, customers delivered lists to a clerk who then moved up and down shelves to fill orders. Choices were limited to what was available. No one wandered aisles searching for an exact combination of cough syrup ingredients or Green Giant approved no-salt green beans.

For those who find themselves obsessively reading labels as they cruise canned good, pharmacy, and baking aisles, my uncle’s example of shopping appears ridiculously simple. There’s no way that would work today when consumers determine whether they want organic vegetables or one of the nine types of flour. Heavens, aspirin selections alone can drive shoppers batty. They have to know whether they prefer enteric or regular, high or low dosage, generic or name brand, or . . . the list goes on. Once they reach the wine aisle, matters go downhill.

In the old days, choices were simple. Flour and sugar came from barrels. The only choice involved ordering a specific quantity, and finances often dictated that. Even after stores sacked such staples, space limited brand preferences for canned fruits and vegetables. Consumers bought what was available since my uncle’s store was the only one around in those horse and buggy days.

The little town I lived in as a newlywed still had its old store with high ceilings and wood plank floors. Over time, the owner updated it to include rows of shelving arranged along narrow aisles so customers could carry a basket and collect their own products. Lack of space limited selection so shopping was simple. At a back counter, a fine butcher cut meat to order. Folks could call in their order or drop off a list if they desired. Though it’s only memory, it remains my favorite market.

Recently, a newscast reported major internet vendors sell groceries online. Shoppers log onto sites, review options, select product, pay electronically, and either pick up their items or have them shipped to home addresses. Apparently, robots can fill orders and drones make deliveries. Despite the Jetson-like cartoon angle, this practice follows my relative’s old grocery store shopping model. You wonder if the brainchild behind this had an uncle who collected orders for old-time mercantile patrons.

Mull the possibilities. Will this innovation simplify consumers’ lives? They order what they want and skip competing choice or will someone devise a companion site to reveal exact ingredients and cheapest sources? Will algorithms unveil exactly what shoppers desire before mathematical functions suggest substitutes? Despite its high-tech twists, this shopping technique strikingly resembles my uncle’s first job in a small town grocery store. 

Mentioning Unmentionables

Talk to most women today, and they don’t remember not wearing pants or slacks to work or school. Visit with ladies past a certain age, and they’ll tell about a time when schools required little girls to wear dresses or skirts to class and employers mandated females do the same at work. Moms even cleaned house in a dress. Most mothers didn’t go so far as TV stars who wore pearls and heels to vacuum, but they made certain they could answer the door without causing the neighbors to gossip about manly apparel. Granted, such fashions weren’t the cumbersome Mother Hubbard gowns or flowing long skirts pioneers wore, but they complicated daily life unnecessarily.

Some would say mid-century housewives and schoolgirls didn’t have it so bad. Unlike travelers across emigrant trails, they didn’t have to worry about their hems catching fire while they cooked outdoors or tripping on them, crossing uneven surfaces. Gals of the 30s - 60s revealed ankles and calves and enjoyed freedom of movement their grandmas never knew. 

What folks don’t think about is getting to work or school during frigid temperatures and snowstorms. Some families solved the problem the way pedestrians in large cities do today. Individuals wore slacks under or over their dresses on the way to their destination and changed after arriving.  

What no one took into account was the playground dilemma little girls faced. As public schools added more recess equipment that involved climbing and twirling, females struggled to prevent others from seeing their bloomers and singing risqué songs involving London, France, and underpants. Learning to read, write, and do arithmetic was hard enough without worrying about peers knowing the color and condition of personal garments.

Keep in mind, these were days either before or soon after WW II when most families couldn’t afford a week’s supply of lacy undies for their daughters. Frequently, one sibling handed clean but pre-worn clothing to the next in line, causing more than one playground confrontation resulting in a bloody nose or black eye.

With the advent of monkey bars, girls who wanted go head to head in acrobatic challenges wore summer shorts under dresses. This added to mom’s laundry, but youngsters trying to perform a flip while tucking hems under or between knees meant re-stitching seams or patching fabric on a daily basis or worse, a broken arm. It was easier to wash extra clothing.

Certainly, women who grew up wearing dresses learned decorum regarding sitting with knees and ankles pressed together. Today’s females frequently discover the necessity of such postures the first time they publicly wear a short dress. More than one teacher or boss has observed lack of awareness concerning this detail.

No doubt, about it, females and pants go together from infancy to old age. Who needs to worry about a skirt rising in a breeze or during a cartwheel, offering a peek at undergarments. Too bad pioneer women never got to find out how much easier their lives would have been if they had worn trousers.

Laundry on the Trail

I love to read historical accounts about settling the West. After finishing a book or primary source, I can’t wait to see visit the locale mentioned. Recently, I’ve driven an eighth of the approximately 2100 mile Oregon Trail where it winds along the Platte in Nebraska and Wyoming. During an overnight stop along the way, I read a pamphlet explaining that settlers camping along the river near modern day Guernsey, Wyoming, named that site Emigrant Washtubs. I easily imagined dust-coated women eagerly awaiting a chance to scrub dirty laundry.

Modern travelers quickly learn that a day in a car where windows magnifying sunrays and fine prairie dust sifts through cracks and crevices leads to funky odors and gritty skin. Imagine folks walking long hours under summer sun as they trailed wagons that raised a perpetual Pig Pen-style dust cloud. The resulting scents and filth had to have been atrocious. To make it worse, those nomads didn’t have multiple changes of clean clothing to start their days. Babes in diapers had it even worse.

 Lillian Schlissel’s Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey helped me understand these pioneer journeys. The diarists’ words and Schlissel’s commentary bring their travels to life. The author explains women couldn’t maintain regularly scheduled washdays. Instead, they laundered when they camped for more than a day near a substantial body of water. If they were lucky, they’d find enough fuel to heat water. If not, they settled for cold. Without clotheslines, bushes or rocks served to dry wet clothing. One writer mentioned they wore their clothing as it dried.

One diarist, a Rebecca Ketchum, bemoans her skin condition prior to and after laundry day. “Our hands are blacker than a farmer’s and I do not see there is any way of preventing it, for everything has to be done in the wind and sun.” She explains that washday only compounded the damage. “Camilla and I both burnt our arms very badly while washing. They were red and swollen and painful as though scalded with boiling water.”

Jane Gould Tortillott offers another example of laundry difficulties. One Saturday, as her party made camp along the Platte, she tells us, “Gus and I took my clothes to the river to rinse them. Was a little island covered with wild bushes nearby. Gus tried to wade over to it—to hang the clothes but it was too deep so we were obliged to hang them on some low bushes close to the river.”

Catherine Haun, an emigrant from Iowa, anticipated problems and wore a dark woolen dress through most of her journey. She tells us it “protected her from the sun and wind and economized in laundrying which was important considering the lack of ‘wash day’ conveniences.”

My stop at Emigrant Washtubs and subsequent reading of these diaries made me better appreciate  these uprooted women who followed their men west. Not only did they live for months under open skies in unfamiliar and frequently dangerous landscapes, they also managed their laundry without the conveniences of home. I’m more than grateful for my automatic washing machine.

Hanging Clothes Outside: a Prescription for Good Health

A friend recently sent me a cartoon that struck my funny bone. In it, two women stand near an old-fashioned clothesline as one ironically tells the other this device dries her laundry using the very latest solar and wind technology. It made me think about people who’ve never hung clothes outside to dry. It also helped me recall helping mom and grandma pin wet laundry on the line and then remove and fold it afterward. Grasping sun-warmed fabric and breathing in breeze-scented sheets and towels is a heady experience, even in a technology-oriented world.

I suspect if more of us depended less on dryers and more on clotheslines, we’d be healthier. Several recently published articles suggest older Americans need more sunshine to help with vitamin D absorption. I’m guessing the amount of time it takes to hang a basket of wet laundry and then retrieve the dry result delivers that daily requirement.  

Not only are many folks in need of more vitamin D, they also suffer from anxiety. Experts who deal with such issues remind us fresh air and exercise are good medicine for such ills. It would be interesting to know if our grandmothers fretted less because they spent more time with their clotheslines. After hanging a couple of loads of sheets and towels the other morning, I see how time outside listening to birds sing and feeling warm breezes caress skin contributes to a peaceful disposition. In addition, you get exercise by repetitively bending, reaching, and pinning wet fabric. Once my basket was empty and the laundry fluttered in the breeze, my concerns seemed to shake away as well.

Add that repetitive action to sunshine and fresh air, and you have the ingredients necessary to generate a good mood. It satisfies the soul to see a clothesline weighed down with clean linens and clothing. The reverse efforts of unpinning dry objects and folding them to put in the basket just as effectively reduces stress. Listening to and watching birds multiplies these positive effects.

In fact, once those fresh sheets and towels are ready to go back on the beds and in the cupboards, you discover another boon. What feels and smells better that sun-dried bedding or terrycloth? Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I swear line-dried sheets freshen a whole room. When I crawled between them that night, that outdoor scent plunged me into deep slumber the minute my head hit the pillow. The fact I’d labored to hang, fold, and put away king-size bedding and towels may have contributed to my exhaustion.

Humans have so many labor saving devices that make life easier. Despite such convenience, we should consider what we lose in terms of physical and mental health. Do some of our grandparents’ old- fashioned housekeeping techniques aid in vitamin absorption as well as connect us to the outdoors where sunlight, fresh air, and exercise renew spirits without requiring prescription drug use.