Every morning the world looks like a very bad place to live in.

Even close to home, people are getting shot and murder is becoming all too common.

Evil seems to be going on a rampage.

But here at home, the biggest problem is keeping up with the laundry.

Unless we are homeless or human dirtbags, doing the laundry and dishes are a major part of our life.

I can remember when Monday was the universal laundry day.

My mother would haul out that old circular wash tub with the rollers on top to squeeze water out of freshly washed clothes.

Then the damp clothes went into a basket, which we carried out to the clothes lines in the backyard. We hung the clothes out to dry in the wind using clothespins to hold them on the line.

In perfect weather, the smell of wind-dried clothes was lovely.

Sometimes it would rain too long or the wind would be too strong. And the dirty clothes would pile up until a true sunny day arrived.

In winter we washed more often because space for hanging wet clothes in the house was limited.

One thing I hated about winter was the damp inside the house. It was a big reason we were so happy when spring arrived.

For those who lived too close to the railroad tracks, the soot from steam locomotives soiled clothes hung outside.

And in those days it seemed like a train a minute came speeding by.

I have no idea how people coped with that problem.

If you really wanted to make your mother mad, walk home over a railroad bridge and stand at the edge as a train passed under you.

The result could be awful for clothes, skin and hair. Not many kids ever tried that trick twice.

Today is laundry day here at the ranch. Time to haul out the underwear, round up the socks and towels and decide which shirts and pants can handle the washer and dryer.

There are no clothes lines and poles in my backyard, and most likely not in yours either.

For my money, the washer and dryer are two of the best things to come out of the 20th century.

Right now the colored stuff is washed and drying. The white stuff, mostly underwear, is spinning around in the washer and making big-time noise.

The only task is to clean the lint out of the lint catcher, and a hand-held vacuum does the job. Yet another great invention.

The hardest part of laundry is folding. My late wife, Victoria, was a demon when it came to folding. Everything had to be folded just so and put away as if it were fine family silver.

Sheets are particularly hard to fold.

I’m a lot more casual. If it fits in the drawer then it’s OK. Who’s going to check anyway?

Now and then, perhaps three or four times a year, I have to haul my quilt cover or heavy jeans off to a laundromat. It takes a lot of time and quarters to get that job done. I always take a book and hope it’s not raining.

So as the world continues to go crazy, it’s the little things like laundry, dishes, cooking and paying the bills that keep life going.


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