The Monday Wash

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t an actual competition  but everybody knew that any respectable island woman who didn’t have her Monday wash hung by ten in the morning was going to be talked about  by noon.  

Nana was up and dressed long before the factory whistle sounded at seven.  Provided it was a fine day, she put on her yellow Playtex gloves, tied her apron securely and prepared to do battle with the old wringer washing machine.  It took both of us to push, pull, shove and wrangle it to the kitchen sink.  We filled it to the brim and then dropped in a week’s worth of assorted laundry. 

“I declare,” she routinely remarked with a discreet glance at the old kitchen wall clock, “How so few people can manage to dirty so many clothes is beyond me.”

The old machine had served faithfully for years, a well-made and loyal old appliance it was, it made a comforting ruckus as it chugged and splashed  through  its cycles.  When it was done, we would carefully feed each piece of laundry through the wringers - “Mind your fingers!”  Nana always reminded me and always more than once - and into the frayed wicker basket.   Together we would carry the basket to the backyard clothesline where she would pull out one item at a time, holding out her free hand for wooden clothespins - I handed them to her two at a time and she put them between her teeth,  then one at a time secured them to the lines - it was slow work because she was meticulous that everything should hang even and straight with no wasted space but there was an edge of panic in the breezy morning air.  As she started each new line of clothes, I watched her check her watch and then look around and over her shoulder as if she were being spied upon.   Sheets and pillow cases and towels on the far end, delicates hidden in the in the middle, shorts and dungarees and t shirts on the near end all fluttered and swung in the sweet, salty air and with a final glance at her watch, Nana pronounced it good.

“Twenty after nine,” she said with a satisfied smile, “Five minutes ahead of last week.”

It was an adult thing, I decided, one of those mysteries that I was always being told I’d understand when I was older, like why you had to have light coming over your left shoulder when you were reading or how cleaning my plate would help the children starving in Europe.  Nana had a complete set of gold bound Encyclopedia Britannicas and had shown me Europe on one of the illustrated maps but it was on the other side of the world and as far as I could see, didn’t have much connection to scalloped potatoes. I’d begun to think that some of the adult things I’d understand when I was older were made up on the spot.

 “Waste not, want not.” Nana told me over a plate of liver and onions while I tried my best not to gag.

“It looks like it’s alive,” I protested sullenly, “It’s bleeding.  And it smells bad.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” my mother said wearily, “Just eat.”

But I was a stubborn child and if my only choice was liver and onions, I was perfectly willing to be sent to bed without supper.  It seemed a small price to pay, starving European children or not.

Monday was also the traditional once-a-week shopping day. 

The village featured not one but two general stores - Norman’s had been there the longest, a long, low and dimly lit building with a musty smell of tobacco, stale penny candy and old paint was favored by the locals - the old fishermen liked to congregate on the window seats and smoke, whittle, gossip and spit.   Nana still stopped in now and then, out of loyalty she often said, but she preferred McIntyre’s with its bright lights and big picture windows.  There was a touch of modern in the three story building with its  shiny new cash register and fancy overhead lighting, the Spiegel  catalogue was always current, and it was the only place in the village with a gas pump.  The only thing you couldn’t find (or order) at either store was meat - that came every other Wednesday in a rickety, refrigerated pick- up truck, all the way from Church Point - Bill Brown had been making rounds to island homes for as long as anyone could remember.  Steaks, chops, slabs of ribs and roasts that could feed a small army were all neatly crammed into the little truck, wrapped in slick white paper and neatly labeled, strictly cash and carry.  After a steady diet of haddock and halibut and the now and then special occasion lobster, it was like Christmas when the old truck pulled in the driveway.

 “Ready?” my grandmother asked as she hung up her apron, freshened her lipstick, and tucked her little pocket notebook into her purse.  She inspected me for a clean face and loose shoelaces, said I would do, and let me lead the way to the old Lincoln.  The Monday wash flapped and crackled as we passed, the sheets snapping sharply in the wind.

After McIntyre’s, we drove a little further up island for vegetables, filling two fruit baskets with sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from Miss Lilly’s farm.

 

“Tsk, tsk,” Nana said under her breath but a tiny bit gleefully as we passed the rare house without a Monday wash blowing on the line, “Somebody’s sleepin’ in, I declare.” 

 By the time the back-to-work factory whistle blew at one, we were home, cruising down the steep gravel driveway and well pleased with ourselves.  The Monday wash was brought in, sorted, neatly folded and put away.  Nana stoked the fire in the cast iron stove and the kitchen shone with sunlight.  My mother had been busy and two apple pies were cooling on the windowsill while the dogs,who had gone slightly mad at the approach of the dusty Continental coming down the drive, were once again peacefully sleeping at the back door.

It was just another day passing in a long summer of contentment.