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Dirty laundry

by George Custer | Apr 18, 2023 | Featured Sidebar

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By BEN OLSON/for The Herald  —  Dirty Laundry. It is personal or private affairs that one does not want made public. It is a song written by Don Henley and Danny Kortchmar that Henley sang on his 1982 album “I Can’t Stand Still”. For most of us, it’s that pile in the closet that seems to always need attending to.

 

My mother neglected to teach me how to do my laundry, or anyone else’s, for that matter. She was a good mom on almost all counts, but she didn’t teach my brothers and me any domestic skills. She just did all those things for us, thinking that soon we would have a wife that would take over. I’m sure there are women reading this right now with steam rising off their foreheads. But that was the way it was. I got thrown out into the world at 18 not knowing very many of the basics, doing laundry being one of them.

 

The dirty clothes must be gathered up and transported to where laundering takes place. No longer was I living where there was a washer and dryer in the other room that I didn’t know how to operate. In the midwest, it was a laundromat. I have been in places where it was called, alternately, a washateria, a launderette, a washette and a lavanderia. I learned at a price. I learned about separating the colors from the whites. All my whitey-tighties were pink as carnations after 45 minutes in the wash with my new Badger sweatshirt. How much is too much in a washing machine? How dirty were the clothes? Did you clean out ALL your pockets? Can I substitute dish soap? How about Dr. Bronners all-one magic soap?  It seems that it said somewhere on the label that it would work for laundry.

 

Just because the clothes got through the wash undamaged, they still needed to be dried. More learning by trial and error. Poly-propylene long johns run through the dryer can be donated to my nephew, who is in 2nd grade. Those jeans fit perfectly until I dried them. I’m not sure if I was being cheap or trying to save the planet when I decided to work with a clothesline. It did represent an hour less time at the laundromat. 

 

All my domestic skills were well-honed by the time I got married at age 44. I do a share of the cooking, cleaning and washing, but my wife does more. We both agree that she is better at it. I’m relegated to doing the outside stuff, working with implements and equipment with engines or motors. In this day and age, a lot of it runs on batteries.

 

 I wish now, 60 years after the fact, that my mother had been more demanding about making us pull our weight around the house.

Ben Olson photo

Ben Olson, musician and Oakridge Resident, with his standup bass. Ben is a regular contributor, as well as the Entertainment Report’s columnist.

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George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.

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Written by George Custer

April 18, 2023

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