Puffs

This week we are writing before the June 6 anniversary of D-Day. Seems the date receives less attention as we get further from 1944 when the invasion of Europe began. In one of the largest battles ever to take place, approximately 135,000 men ended up as casualties, 29,000 killed.

We are far removed from June 6, 1944, but our family does have a personal connection to that date. My father-in-law was the co-pilot of a B-17 plane and they flew three missions on that day in support of the invasion. He later was shot down on a mission over Germany and spent the last 11 months of WWII in a German POW camp.

The best we can now do is to pray for all those who fought in the largest war in history. (Include, as well, all those who served the nation honorably since that time.)

A O

Last week, after I wrote a little about ‘changes’ taking place all around us. I received the “Our Wisconsin” magazine in the mail. (My brother-in-law thinks I need to know more about Wisconsin.) In any case, there was a nice little story in the magazine I wanted to pass on as it shows how little we notice change until it is shown to us.

This little story involves a grandmother and seven year old granddaughter as the older lady is assisted by the younger on “wash day.”

“It all starts with wiping down the clothesline. When I got old enough that was my first job,” said the grandmother.

The youngster takes a sock from the basket and pins it in place. I tell her we need to hang the socks from the toes and make sure that matching socks are next to each other.

“Why does it matter?” she wonders.

“Mom always said she wanted her clothesline orderly,” I explain. “Otherwise, what would the neighbors think?”

Socks went into the wash machine right side out. Then mom put them through the wringer and into the rinse water twice. I stood next to the rinse tub, turning each sock wrong side out. Once they were dry, it was my job to turn them right side out.

The youngster seemed to understand the sock process but questions what a wringer is.

Handed a pair of underpants to hang, grandma moves to the center line.

“Why don’t you put it next to the towels on the outside line?” she asks.

Grandma explains that mom was particular about that. Undergarments were never hung where the neighbors could see them. Sheets and towels went on the outside lines and other things on the inside. Neighbors back then cared what the wash line looked like. Women took pride in having bright whites on the line. It was a symbol of a good homemaker.

Later, granddaughter helped remove the dry clothes from the line, fold towels and sort the socks. Then we come to the blouses that needed to be ironed. Grandma said “we’ll sprinkle these and iron them in about an hour.”

“Sprinkle?” she asks. “What’s that?”

Grandma hands her the sprinkling bottle, another obsolete household tool, and shows her how to dampen clothes. Grabbing the ironing board, I demonstrate how to iron, telling her it wasn’t always this easy.

“Mom had a series of irons that were placed on a hot stove,” I relate. “As one cooled, another replaced it until the last item had been ironed. It took two hot irons to press my grandpa’s shirts.”

Grandma explains the white items went in first. As the water cooled, she’d wash the dark clothing in the same water. If someone in the family was sick, she boiled the handkerchiefs on the stove before putting them in the wash.

“Grandma, what’s a handkerchief?” granddaughter asks.

“That story is for another day!”

A O

Passing along family history and also passing on some history of family washing technology.

What a deal. Surprising what comes out of Wisconsin.

A O

Changes . . . need to pass along another couple of tidbits of information. This comes from the American Legion magazine we just received. The magazine reported the source is from a place called: “reviews.org.”

It is about changes that have occurred in the last 30 years or so.

* 344 – the average number of times per day American adults check their cellphones.

* 71% - Adults who say they check their phones within ten minutes of waking up each day.

* 53% - Adults who say their phones would be the No. 1 possession they’d try to save in the event of a house fire or disaster.

* 47% - Adults who say they’re ‘addicted’ to their phones.

“Good,” “Bad,” or “just the way things are today!” You decide for yourself.

A O

Your dear ole U. S. government spends a great deal of time keeping track of many things. The economy and how it is operating is one of the major objects of its attention.

I don’t think this is a ‘change’ from the past (recent past at least), but I noticed last week they gave the numbers for employment in the U. S., inflation rates and other information they feel is needed.

Two things about a number of these indicators of the economy. First off, the numbers are always ‘compared’ to what was ‘expected.’

I really don’t know what good that does. I could come up with an ‘expected’ number and what good would that be when the actual numbers are reported. (Also, it seems that the current government always exceeds the expected numbers. How do you suppose that happens?)

Secondly, I noticed that last week, the number of “newly employed” people was put somewhere around 329,000.

To me that sounds like a huge number, but larger figures have been reported in other monthly reports, so I don’t really know what it means.

However . . . they don’t report on the number of people that were ‘fired,’ or ‘removed from the employment numbers’ for some reason. That figure, reported at another time was close to 400,000. The month ended up with fewer people employed than the month before with a higher unemployment number.

Life is interesting . . . be careful of what you read or hear on the national media.

A O

I’ll end this week with a little story from the American Legion magazine.

An employer asked an applicant, “How long did you work at your other job?”

“Fifty-five years,” the applicant replied.

“How could you work somewhere for 55 years when you’re only 45?” the employer exclaimed.

“Overtime.”

That’s an explanation many of us could understand as that’s the way many of us have lived whether self-employed, or having worked for others all our lives.

A O