Laundry… the never-ending story.
~Author Unknown
My great-aunt’s house, with clothes draped everywhere, made the Goodwill store look like Saks Fifth Avenue. We would visit her once a year, “often enough,” according to my father. It was a significant road trip from our Eastern Iowa farmstead across the mighty Mississippi River to Illinois, and what we found when we arrived, every year, was chaos.
The amazing thing about this aunt is that she never put away things she had laundered. Towels, bed linens, underwear, overalls — anything that had passed through the washing machine — were folded and draped over chairs and tables in her house. Her living room looked like the January white sale at JCPenney.
It wasn’t that we objected to drying laundry in full view. Although my mother would normally hang our clothes outside to dry, she would occasionally dry them indoors during the worst part of winter. But when they were dry, they were folded and sent to the proper drawer or closet.
So Mom was completely flabbergasted by her aunt’s laundry exhibit. No one, as far as I know, ever said a word about this mess to my great-aunt. Hence, every summer visit there would be the same. We were greeted by vast quantities of folded laundry, displayed as to render every piece of furniture useless. There were no chairs you could sit in, no tables you could dine at, and no sofas on which to lounge.
It seemed our summertime visits always coincided with favorable weather, allowing drinking and eating to occur outside. I think my dad prayed for a sunny day whenever we went to my great-aunt’s house. Before one trip, I heard him tell my mom, “I sure hope it’s a nice day so we can sit outside.”
He never elaborated on what would happen if it were a rainy day, but we youngsters always imagined that he was tormented by the prospect of squeezing himself onto the couch between various pieces of our great-aunt’s unmentionables.
~Dale Kueter
