Washers, Ringers, and little Tom Tinker

An angel food cake pan was a pretty good substitute for a real washing machine for my little brother, Phil. He LOVED washing machines. When he was three and I was five, Mom had to be really careful that he didn't climb right in the washer. He loved watching it agitate. We got a child's size washer for Christmas one year. I think it was mine but Phil thought it was his. We could put water in it, wash some doll clothes and watch the water drain into the sink out of a tiny hose.

I remember when we got a ringer washing machine to rinse piddly diapers. Mom used it to soak diapers and then ring them out and dry them on the line before she got a full load to wash in the automatic washer. We loved using the ringer aparatus. You had to be quick so it didn't pull your hand into the roller. Aunt Hazel got her whole arm pulled into one and was injured pretty badly once.

We didn't have a dryer. We hung the clothes on the outside line in the summer and we had a clothesline in the basement for the winter. My grandma Dayton had a dryer long before we got one. When the clothes were dry, it played chimes to the tune "How dry I am." My cousin Jane and I sang along..."How dry I am. How wet I'll be...if I don't find the bathroom key."

When David and Linda came along, our sleeping arrangements were pretty crowded. We were all sleeping in the north bedroom of our house. We had a set of bunk beds and a double bed in our room. I remember it being very fun having that many kids in one room. It was pretty hard to get us to go to sleep, though. Ask any of our babysitters. They could make us go to bed but they couldn't stop us from giggling.

Later, Linda and I moved downstairs to sleep and dad cut a door between the north bedroom and the hall by the kitchen. For many years before that we had an unfinished basement. Dad let us make chalk hopscothes on the concrete downstairs. We roller skated there on the concrete after we moved the pool table out. Later we laid tile down and dad painted a shuffleboard court onto the tile. Dad painted a hopscotch on the driveway for us in bright yellow paint like the ones at school.

I still remember how scary it was to be downstairs alone. We had a coal chute where they dropped coal to fuel our furnace. Looking into the furnace was really exciting. I remember dad putting coal into the furnace from the coal room and then he took out clinkers (burned up coal) with claw like tongs when the coal had burned. Dad made chrystal gardens from the clinkers for his students by putting ammonia, bluing, and salt on the klinker and then letting it grow.

We all knew the song sung in a round: Little Tom Tinker got burned by a clinker and he began to cry, "Ma, Ma" Poor little innocent boy.