Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

​Ironing Day
 
Our kitchen was very small. On the right of the entrance to the kitchen from the living room door was the table where my mother washed dishes in a dishpan and put them to be rinsed in another. It is also where she did all of her cooking preparation. There was a window between the table and the kitchen cabinet. The kitchen door was on the back wall leading into the back porch. A washstand with a white enameled wash pan on top stood on the other side of the door. There was a medicine cabinet with a mirrored front on the wall over the washstand. The gas kitchen stove stood on the left side of the living room entrance with enough space to put an ironing board just before the dining room entrance.
 
It was a good place to put the ironing board because it was close to the stove where the irons were heated. They were not electric and had to be set on the stove flame to heat them up.
 
For some reason, my sisters Jean and Kat ironed on Saturday. Maybe because of school or work. In my opinion, their ironing would have been uneventful other than what they did while they ironed. For one thing, they heated up the curling irons on the same stove at the same time. They ironed their clothes and curled their hair. And secondly, Jean always had the radio on listening to music. Later, she was the first to get a record player. Country music was her preference but she also listened to other music. One of her favorite songs at that time was, “Tennessee Waltz”. I know the words to most of the songs of that era, thanks to Jean.
 
Before she passed away in 2017, we went to visit her. We asked what her favorite song was. I was surprised when she said, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”. I shouldn’t have been surprised because that was the kind of music she had always liked. It was nice to see that her taste hadn’t really changed.
 
I guess ironing can be about more than ironing.

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck