THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160254
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 52 lines
A study has found that simply doing chores will assure a body sufficient moderate exercise for a reasonably healthy life.
That's very well to say, but, thanks to technology, many households have become choreless.
Soiled clothes? Fling 'em in the washing machine, let 'em chug around and, that done, throw 'em in the dryer to spin dry.
But in olden times, all of Monday was devoted to washing clothes in water boiling in a galvanized tin tub, which you stirred with a broomstick, threw in some bluing, rinsed 'em, hung 'em on a clothes line to dry, then hauled 'em to the ironing board and pressed them and folded them - not forgetting to match the socks - and stacked them in proper places.
That wasn't just moderate exercise - it was arduous toil comparable to one of the labors of Hercules. When told to wash clothes on a Monday, Herk said, ``I quit!''
There was this, though. Bed sheets, dried flapping under the sun on a breezy day, had a fragrance, a whiff of the outdoors, that is lost to those washed in modern machines.
On wash day, back yards everywhere bristled in white sheets as if the neighborhood were a three-masted schooner under full sail.
When most people cut the grass today, they use a power mower, walking sedately back and forth across the lawn, sometimes even riding - a mower that would have been regarded in my childhood as a huge toy. We'd have fought for a turn at steering it.
But it has drawbacks. Driven on foot or from a perch, the power mower makes a steady, monotonous putt-putting and, on occasion, emits gaseous fumes.
Pushing an old-time mower by hand, sometimes along steep banks, was no walk in the park. It called for frequent stops to rest in the shade with a lemonade.
But there was this. The hand-pushed mower made a restful, rollicking sound, pushing forward and pulling backward, a sonorous summer noise as of slow, steady breathing as the blades whirled, a sound attuned to crickets in the grass and cicadas singing in trees, to blue jays screeching. One could, on an afternoon, hearing the neighbor's rhythmic mower, doze.
The modern dish washer - one loads and pushes a button to start it - is one of several inventions that liberated women and gave them the time to enter a world at large deprived too long of their guidance.
Man walking on the moon was nothing compared to women walking out of the kitchen.
Yet, standing at a sink under a window opening on a sunset, she washing the dishes, he drying, or vice versa, was for many couples a quiet, sweet space in which they could, as they went through the simple routine, relax and mull over the events of a hectic day. by CNB