Some Baby Boomers may have memories of mechanical washing machines that had a big metal tub sitting on metal legs. Women filled them with water and detergent and dirty clothes. They scrubbed the clothes until they were clean and drained the tub and refilled it with rinse water. On the top edge of the tub was a wringer that consisted of two cylinders parallel to each other with a cranking handle on one end. When the clothes were washed and rinsed they were cranked through the wringer to get most of the water out and then put in the laundry basket to be hung on the clothesline.
The whole contraption seems so archaic now. And yet, it was so much nicer than having only a washboard, which was basically a rectangle of corrugated metal framed by wood. The dirty clothes would be soaked in water, rubbed with a bar of soap and then rubbed up and down the washboard to get them clean. Now that was hard work.
I am so grateful that women don’t have to do that kind of work anymore. At least not here in the developed countries. Since women don’t have to labor that way, we have more time and energy for developing other skills. Yet, somewhere inside many women is the memory of washboards and wringers.
I’m pretty sure the ancestors who did scrub on washboards and send clothes through the wringer were on the floor of the US Congress last week when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the laundry. She dumped Congressman Yoho in the detergent water and scrubbed him up and down the washboard just to get him clean enough to go back into the tub where she could finish getting the crap off him. She finally rinsed him off and sent him through the wringer. The water was brown with his filth by the time she was done and we witnessed how dirty he was. She did the job right. She did the job well.
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