Life Was So Peaceful in the Laundry

I am genetically predisposed to enjoy laundry and ironing. Really.

 My grandfather owned and operated several large commercial laundries in his lifetime. He even secured a patent on a device for timing laundry cycles in the days before automatic washing machines and dryers.  His children frequently helped out as they grew up. My father and his brothers and sisters could reduce themselves to speechless laughter, tears streaming down their faces, as they told stories from their times in the laundry.

Most of what they helped with was folding clean and dry clothes. Every single one of them had a keen eye for properly folded items, especially tablecloths and sheets. When communion Sunday rolled around in the Baptist church I attended as a child, the communion vessels lay covered with a beautifully laundered and pressed cloth. Two deacons removed this cloth and folded it before the bread and grape juice could be distributed. My father and his sister Rachel watched the folding with eagle eyes, and we always heard a critique of the deacons' efforts. I don't believe anyone ever achieved a 100% approval rating! And I fear that I wouldn't meet their standards now either, although I can fold a mean sheet or tablecloth.

One of my favorite stories about Grandfather Harrison comes from his time as the director of laundry services at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach during the Second World War. On his first day in this position, my grandfather confronted a room in the laundry area that was filled with the hotel's 'dirty linen'. These were pieces which had been so severely stained that the previous laundry service directors had given up hope of cleaning them. The hotel manager told my grandfather to do what he could and then throw away the unusable pieces. Grandfather took up his duties as director, improving laundry services and raising the standards of the Cavalier's amenities. Every now and then he would take out pieces from the 'hopeless' pile of laundry and attack the perverse stains. He had studied his profession with the focus and curiosity of a chemistry professor and, according to my father, knew how best to remove an astonishing variety of stains. Over the several years he served at the Cavalier, my grandfather restored every single piece of the 'hopelessly stained' hotel linen. And he left no ruined linen behind for his successor when he moved on to the Monticello Hotel in downtown Norfolk. I love this image of him, patiently and thoroughly attacking the challenge of this mountain of dirty linen, and using his encyclopedic knowledge of the chemistry of cleaning fabrics to prevent his employer from losing part of his business investment.

As a result of this kind of heritage, I love to do laundry! Now, of course, we don't have to consult stain removal reference books and we seldom even add bleach. I suspect few of us even use hot water very much for our laundry loads. But I enjoy the challenge of a tough stain and I love to produce a fresh, dry stack of clothes and linens.

I don't have much scope for ironing now, since so many fabrics are no-iron, but I well remember my mother turning most of the household ironing over to me by the time I was 10. I would set up the ironing board in our kitchen and she would bring in the clean clothes that needed attention. I would cheerfully stand there and iron anything she needed me to do. Even after I had grown up and moved away, whenever I came home to visit I would do a batch or two of ironing. And my Grandmother Harrison herself was known to critique the thoroughness of my technique when I ironed shirt collars!

My father and his brothers and sisters always looked back fondly on their times helping out my grandfather. When they finished up their swapping of tales about those years, they would smile at each other and say, "Life was so peaceful in the laundry".  I can appreciate that!