Washing Clothes Under Communism

Hand Soap Cheia, type superior

I remember vividly having to do laundry by hand in our heavy bathtub because it was the only container large enough to wash sheets in our tiny apartment. In summertime we used the tub to chill watermelons by running water over them and adding ice if available.

My hands and my mom's were raw from washing clothes with lye soap (see the photo). It sounds like we lived in Dickensian times but it was the same in many ways.

We had to boil enough water to do the wash and to actually boil white clothes in another cooking pot on the stove with lye soap in hopes that stains might come out and the whites will be brighter. No such thing as bleach. We used some blue dye cubes to restore the blue tint to men's shirts and our school uniforms when the shirts faded. Mom starched our shirts with a mixture of flour and water, when flour was available. But we had plenty of DDT to kill pests with in the garden and even vitriol.

Pesticide pump called Flit - it was often used to spray DDT

My grandmother had a small carved wood oval tub to wash things in by hand. The reason it was so small was because she only had so much soap and water available. She washed the sheets at the crystal clear river. I am not sure if the resident fish liked that very much.

Photo: Wikipedia

Copaie de lemn

The tub doubled as a dishwasher, face wash, and a place for newborns to be rocked in. I remember being rocked to sleep in such a tub when I was a toddler and my legs and arms were hanging over the sides, like a chunk of meat too large for the cooking pot.

In case you wonder what prompted these memories, I had to do a lot of laundry this week, no scrubbing, just a lazy American folding them and putting them away, washer and dryer did all the work, God bless the person who invented them. But, I’m old, the arthritis hurts, and climbing stairs with a laundry basket is not so much fun as it once was when the novelty of modernity was amazing. 

And we have abundant electricity and water thanks to the hard-working entrepreneurs and inventors who were allowed to be individual thinkers instead of serfs to the collective.

A Rainy Winter Day

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

It’s been raining for three days, the kind of soaking rain that turns low areas into veritable marshes. Small creeks of muddy water are running down slopes, cutting deep ruts into the hills. Tree roots are beginning to stick out of the river banks, dripping chunks of mud into the river. Fast rivulets are draining from under a deep carpet of dead leaves concealing tree veins as thick as my arm.

It is a cold and dreary day of 43 degrees F, and the steady rain cloaks the thick woods into a curtain of fog-like mist which elongates the bare branches of the tallest trees. One solitaire evergreen adds a spot of dark green to the tall and orange grasses covering the ground of the forest.

The birds, normally darting about and chirping happily are nowhere to be seen, save for the occasional red cardinal or a blue jay. High up on a tree I spot two eagles resting in the haze. Even the deer, foxes, and squirrels are taking shelter. The woods seem deserted of life.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

 

Nature, even in its dormant and rain-soaked state, surrounds me with a beautiful calm and peace. I walk carefully to the pier that stretches far enough into the Potomac that part of it actually belongs to the state of Virginia and the rest belongs to the state of Maryland.  The division of territory is so strange.

My boots sink in murky ground until I reach the wooden walkway to the pier. The sandy beach is saturated with water and covered in dead leaves and branches carried by the rain. The brown water is overflowing its banks and I can see the furious current in the middle bubbling like a boiling cauldron. Should anybody fall into this river right now, it will be unlikely that they would survive the powerful water run.

The river is obscured by a blanket of grey; the sky and the water are an indistinguishable dreary mist from far away. Tall grasses and the occasional evergreen mark God’s perfect painting with natural colors, light orange and dark green.

This time last year the river was crystal clear and blue, frozen solid for a few days, then melted into thick chunks and sheets of ice slowly pushed away from the middle towards the shore by a slower current. If the frigid bluish orange sun hit the ice just right, it sparkled like a chest full of precious diamonds.

The ice had been so thick, blue herons and a few daring fishermen were bold enough to walk on it far away from the shore looking for a break in the ice to fish. In thinner ice spots closer to the banks, the current was moving underneath with determination, trying to crack the ice. The crunching sound underfoot left prints in the frozen ground and crushed the water snails strewn across the sand.

My rubber boots are leaving mud tracks on the wet pavement. A few daring sea gulls flock boldly on the wet asphalt close to me and around the marina where boats normally dock, unafraid of my presence. I take in the crisp and humid air and photograph the forest through raindrops on my camera lens.