20th Century washing machines, wringer rolls. Hanging 'on the line' with clothespins. Diapers and babies. A sneak peek into the 21st Century.

The 20th century was a momentous century. Certainly for clothespins. The one-piece, two pronged one had a tendency to split just as you were putting clothes up on the clothesline. An inventor was up to the challenge. Two pieces of wood, and a coil spring, created a big-time improvement!

But, I am getting ahead of myself. All my early experience came with the two-pronger. My Mom did get a powered wringer for her washing machine, but twice my clothes-guiding hand was swallowed part way into wringer rolls before the emergency feature separated the two rolls. So, with the hands I had left, I hand-squeezed (wrung) the water out of the clothes, and then hung them out on the line. And, enjoyed it. That was far preferable to washing dishes and having to endure my little sister pouting at having to dry them. If I hung the clothes on the line, Sis had to wash and dry the dishes!

20th Century Markers

Photo courtesy of Kerry Bailey

The pairing above may not be in a class with Edison's gramophone or Apple's I-tunes, a century apart. But they certainly were as popular. The pin at top was a marker for the early 20th Century, and the one at the bottom took care of the latter part of the century.

My early 20th century clothes-hanging experience came with general family laundry, shirts, socks, blouses, underclothes and the like. No diapers. By the time I could hang clothes on the line, Sis, just a year behind me, was long out of diapers.

My later clothes hanging experience came with the family that developed from my marriage to Peggy Parker of Norfolk, Virginia. This time it was not my Mom I was helping, but my wife, and not my Sis who was the challenge, but a number of children, seemingly a torrent of them. Eight, to be exact.

Far from reciprocating the help I gave to Mom by hanging clothes, she opposed my marriage. I figured out later she would have opposed my marriage to any gal. But that is another story. Peg and I began married life separated by war, then were together as a traveling couple to Naval Air Stations where I would learn to fly and then fly.

Every day, or at the most every other day, depending on how many babies were still babies, how many diapers we owned, and how big our diaper pail was, I was engaged in the diaper business. I washed them on a scrub board, Peggy rinsed them in clear water, and together we squeezed out as much water as we could (our first Easy Spin Dryer came later). We then put the very damp clothes in a wicker basket for my trip to the yard. I recall three children under three-years old, but we were in the diaper business only two kids at a time.

In Pensacola, when my Navy flight training took us there, our back yard and its clothesline, were alongside the railroad tracks. Active tracks. We lived alongside the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The fancy apartments adjacent to the Naval Air Station airfield, where I was in flight training, had signs, "No Children." The "children" of those signs included the embryos of pregnancy. So, back at our less convenient L&N habitat on East LaRua Street, in Pensacola, Florida, the challenge was to pick a time between freights, and hope the wind was blowing in a favorable direction. If the coal-fired steam engine powering the freight train altered its schedule, and the wind was blowing the wrong way, take all the diapers down, wash them again, and repeat the sequence. And hope.

There was a benefit to our location. Across the street was a little convenience store that had a beer license. About once a month the Budweiser truck rolled up and beer on tap brought out neighbors with mugs who lined up for the brew. Between tap beer replenishments, there was local beer in bottles, named Spearman's Beer. The latter's brewery had billboards around town that stated: "It's the water that does it!" Navy guys would often remark, "Oh, that's what does it." (That didn't keep them from drinking it.)

In Hutchinson, Kansas, at another Navy flight training base, the Santa Fe RR was a few miles away so no gambler's planning was needed for scheduling the wash-and-dry. In fact, with babies and diapers, 'scheduling' was a misnomer anyway. Who knew when the diaper pail would fill up? Manage the diet? Forget it! When the pail filled, came that signal moment that no man could dodge. So, we'd wash them together, and out to the clothes line I would go, with the ever handy bag of clothespins. But, there was a distinct advantage in flat Kansas. Pin up the diapers on a long line, and go back to the head of the line and take 'em down, without interruption. The dependable wind dried them fast. Particularly, the Curity diapers.

So, now we're into diapers, but when we began this story we were on clothes pins. Two different diaper designs did not have a common thread, but for this story they do. Diapers had their own evolution. Curity diapers were light, feathery when dry, and they treated baby's skin with respect. Old-standby muslin diapers were thicker, tougher, a little harder on baby's skin. But, and I hate to admit this, the tougher-on-baby's skin diapers had longer 'use per cycle.' Parents, occasionally exhausted, actually let the little darlings hold the load a bit longer, especially when the diaper was up to the challenge.

Now, just a few words on disposables. Chux were the early disposable diapers. Disposables were welcomed, certainly by all couples in the Armed Services whose habitat was never certain. For those whose recall does not reach back that far, Chux would remind you of the wood fibers used to pack breakables for shipment in earlier days. Chux did not look like wood fibers but had wood's consistency. Chux may have been packing material painted white. Kind of hard on the bare bottom compared with the present soothing disposable materials being used. Chux were labeled disposable, but that is kind of questionable. I always wondered how long it took that material, well, to go away. I don't mean to imply that we always disposed of Chux in the way I am about to describe. Our entire family was not always imprisoned in a Terraplane, with no air conditioning, on a country road in Florida's mid-summer heat.

I hope I do not meet a certain driver who had to trail along behind our car in the Escambia County, Florida lowlands, in the mid-1940s. Narrow, rutted, dirt roads made it hard for a car to pass, particularly where farm animals were free to roam. Open Range it was called. I really hadn't seen that car behind us; it had come up so fast. Out the window of my Hudson Terraplane went a Chux-load. Oooops! Hit the windshield of the car behind me. At least the Terraplane had one last spurt in her. We drove off, while I watched in the rear view mirror to see how the trailing car was dealing with the surprise impact. Maybe he just drove on after the shock, thinking it was a bird. I hope so.

The Twentieth Century was full of changes, and not a few surprises. A lot of them came two at a time. I can assure the reader that the last mentioned episode was a single occurrence. I apologize, even if the urchins, now past middle age, don't understand why they should be sorry too. And, yes, to go back to that title. I know that babies came before diapers, but the diapers sooner made their 'continuum' presence felt. It only took one baby.

Along the way I treated wife Peggy to an Easy Spindrier and later to the full pairing of Maytag washer and drier.

04/27/2010 First Respondor File to Part I

You certainly struck a chord.

I read the clothespin story to my mother and aunt.

They'd wrestled wringer washers, and they remembered the necessity of folding the buttons inward to keep the rollers from breaking them. (I was often similarly interrupted.)

And, their memory of clotheslines in upscale Piedmont (California), where they grew up. Maybe the laundryman or the maid hung out the clothes, but there were clotheslines behind every stately home none-the-less.

One of our neighbors, daughter of the VP of Crown Zellerbach, was the experimenter when Crown Z was getting into the disposable diaper business in the mid 40's. My contemporaries were diapered in various paper-based formulas, effectively shredded bark. I'd have been a candidate too, had not my grandmother tirelessly hung wash on a parasol-like clothesline - keeping me and the next six in Curity.

You probably could have had some more discipline, staying to your theme and making an elegant point in half as many words. But like your Flying book, which was media-appropriate for a web audience of e-mail collaborators, the digressions were a treat to these two (dare I say, elderly) ladies!

Part II: A Sneak Peek at the 21st Century

An off-hours dialogue finds two in conversation. (with a bow to Don Marquis)

fish oil opens the discussion and Tylenol responds.

"You, in Monday, bin #2, whaddya in for?

"Who you talkin' to?"

"I'm right next to you. I'm fish oil, the glassy one, upper left."

"Well, move over, you're crowding me. Then I'll be able to answer."

"Sure. HE dumps us all in here on Saturdays and HE is always in a hurry. Is that better?"

"Sure is. I'm new here. acetaminophen's my real name. Tylenol if you're in the big time. I just came here last week. Guy named Dr. Lane told HIM to try two Aleve and two Tylenol and come back in two weeks."

"All at once!"

"No, no,.. crazy. The two Aleves in the morning, and the two Tylenols at night."

"That makes more sense."

"Where are the Aleves? No room for anything else in this cell."

"Yes. I was awake that morning. HE tried to squeeze the Aleves in here but even HE couldn't press down on the cover that hard, so he left them over next to the toothbrush. Each morning he retrieves two of them from that white tower they come in. Don't say it out loud but just between the two of us, they're really naproxen."

"Any chance you could get him to put the two Icaps over there too. One of them presses on my spine."

"Yes. I can see your predicament. As long as HE can get the top down, HE doesn't care. B-12 is down in the bottom with Terazosin and baby-aspirin, but they don't seem to mind. I have had some contact with Icap #1 and he tells me that the two of them are hard shelled and can take the pressure."

"Yeaah, I'm squeezable, just like the fish I come from. HE treats me as a commodity. But, anyway, finish your answer to my first question. Whaddya in for?"

"Well, HE has a hip problem. As I said, HE went to HIS Doctor who told him there is no in-between, take the pain or get a new hip."

"Soooo! If there is no in-between what do you figure to be here for?

"Dunno. I can't think that far ahead. I'll be gone tonight."

"You should complain. I'll be gone as soon as HE finishes breakfast. At least you have a Brand Name. fish oil has always been generic because it never had PR like Aleve or Tylenol."

"I understand. Let me change the conversation. Did you notice the capital letters in this conversation?"

"Yes I did. I guess that's not archy hitting the keys."

"Nope! mehitabel left word that she and archy didn't hang on long enough to benefit from supplemental health pills."

"Shouldn't make any of us feel better. We're all goners every week."

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