Valuable woman’s work

I once owned a man­gle for a very short time. I bought it at a farm auc­tion and had my hus­band and oth­ers haul it home. A man­gle is the size of a small freezer, but in those days, because its chas­sis was mostly steel, it took four men to move it! Mine only ran one time before smoke bel­lowed from inside and it quit, the lit­tle red light went out and with it a small sym­bol of a less com­pli­cated living.

My grand­mother turned her large brick home on the Hill­top in Colum­bus into a room­ing house after her hus­band was killed in an acci­dent at the Water Works; a man­hole cover had blown off hit­ting him in the head. One of her roomers was George Stein­bren­ner, deceased owner of the New York Yan­kees. He lived at her home while fin­ish­ing at OSU and court­ing his future wife.

As a child, I helped her clean the rooms upstairs and change beds. Her linen closet held stacks of sheets, pil­low cases, embroi­dered dresser run­ners and hand and bath towels.

She pressed those linens into shape with the man­gle she kept in her cool base­ment. Watch­ing that red light come on when the roller was hot meant business.

Grand­mother fed sprin­kled, folded large sheets onto the clothed roller con­trol­ling the clamp with her foot. She knew just how and when to lift and feed, guide and reset, as the smooth ironed fab­ric emerged from the other side. She then folded the sheet again and sent it through once more. On a flow­ered oil cloth table next to the man­gle, the linens piled up. They were orderly stacks ready to be put to use in a small privately-owned busi­ness of a middle-aged widow.

Watch­ing my grand­mother at work, sway­ing rhyth­mi­cally with the open­ing and shut­ting of the roller clamp, smelling cap­tured sun­dried clean sheets, see­ing the steam rise from the moist­ened cloth soothed the soul of those hard times.

As a child, I knew women’s work was valu­able even though small and insignif­i­cant it filled that base­ment with indus­try, activ­ity, in ser­vice to oth­ers using tal­ent and tech­nol­ogy, a very nice com­bi­na­tion my later years have taught me go a long way toward happiness.

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Jun 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.