Time to Iron
I spent some time ironing this morning. I used to keep a basket of ironing. It was something I learned from my mother. My mother had no “profession” but would earn money by taking care of other people’s children and doing ironing. I tried the ironing back when I was still a high school dropout. As I recall, the rate of pay was “per piece.” It was pennies apiece but if you had a lot of ironing to do for someone, you could earn a few dollars. As a child, my mother would sprinkle the clothes she would iron. I suppose she didn’t have a steam iron. Maybe they weren’t available or maybe they were too expensive. She would take the sprinkled clothes and roll them into a tube awaiting the iron. Her tableclothes always seemed to require the most attention. Usually made from cotton even the breeze as they hung on the clothesline didn’t remove the thousands of deep wrinkles. It was only after the heat of the iron that they emerged smooth enough to grace her table. My ex-husband was in the Army....