I remember trying to explain earlier-era life to my young daughter. And one thing always ran into another. For instance, in my youth we did have plastic but it was usually hard brittle plastics. There were no liter bottles of pop. Pop came in six-packs of glass bottles, each capped with a metal crown which had to be pried off. Lots of the other plastic stuff found in every modern home now simply wasn't there. The basic plant sprayer? No, because the mix of softer and more rigid plastics to make the nozzle, the water uptake tube, and the plastic cap to hold the sprayerassembly onto the bottle -- they weren't there.
So in this discussion with my daughter, the plant sprayer led to a discussion of the ironing board because clothes weren't wrinkle-free out of the dryer. Almost everything had to be ironed. And there was a steam button on the electric iron to help you get the wrinkles out. The reservoir had to be refilled and also you had to make sure that there was no mineral content in the water or you'd steam a white cotton blouse or shirt with brownish water. This is why people used distilled water to fill the iron. Distilled water loses something in the steam process that gets rid of the minerals, so it's drinkable but it tastes very flat. This fact would come up later in the history lesson.
So instead of filling the iron reservoir with distilled water that they might not have on hand, housewives (they were real you just don't remember them) used to "sprinkle" the laundry before ironing. They'd fill a drinking glass with either tap water or distilled water, and then add a little bit of laundry starch. Then a shirt would be lifted out of the laundry basket and the ironer would dip her fingertips into the drinking glass of starch water and then flick the shirt with droplets all over, and then roll the sprinkled shirt up into a little ball. She'd set out maybe three of these sprinkled items, and then iron them dry one at a time.
I remember being about five years old and going next door to visit Mrs. Johnson, who lived in the other half of our "double" (duplex). I'd begun hopping up and down and telling my mom I needed to use the bathroom, and Mrs. Johnson had directed me through the kitchen and then left toward the back door where the downstairs bathroom was. Was there a pink crocheted cover for the extra toilet paper roll, with a little rubber poodle head on top? Yup.
So I come back through the kitchen and the ironing board was up, with sprinkled clothes on it. You see where this is going. . . Yes, there was a delicious-looking sparkling glass of water right there next to the iron so I took it down and put it to my lips. This was followed by surprise and a lot of spitting and bleah sounds as my tongue took in the blend of flat distilled water and Sta-Flo starch. Much mirth from Mom and Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Johnson recovered from her chuckling and came into the kitchen and opened a bottle of 7-Up and poured some into a glass for me to take the starch water taste out of my mouth. Did she give me the whole bottle? What? Were we millionaires on Rural Street??
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