Macassar

Note: blog name change as I embrace 80 and french kiss it to the ground. I meant to do it when I turned 70 but I was damn busy then, mayor of a town, host in my wee inn, running a business consulting service and building an off the grid cabin.

"You're a baby," said a fellow tenant to me today in the laundry room as we introduced ourselves. She's 85. It was a luscious feeling if only for a second when my knees, back and wrist reminded me you are no baby, lady.

Anyway to draw your attention back to the title of today's entry.

I saw this word in a book I just finished and I knew what it was but here for your edification is the definition:

Ma·cas·sar

noun

1. 1.

   a kind of oil formerly used, especially by men, to make one's hair shine and lie flat.
2. 2.

   variant spelling of Makassar.

So male readers, if you're missing out on that desired shine, you know what to get.

 

So I thought of my mother and grandmother washing the antimacassars back in the day and hanging them on the line. 

And I haven't heard that word in years, though it was used a lot as the antimacassars had to be washed, starched and ironed quite frequently.

You are puzzled.

Here's the definition:

an·ti·ma·cas·sar

noun

1. a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt or as an ornament.

But also note the grease and dirt belonged to men's heads, their easy chairs, the rarity of washing their hair. I often speculated as a youngster that their hair was glued to their heads by all that oil. You could use their heads as a mirror and see yourself when you looked down on it, as I did frequently, sitting on the arms of their armchairs, one of those kids that wanted to share the newspapers, books or crosswords.

But, I am really, really happy the antimacassar days are over. Along with those filthy hankies men used often in great trumpeting nose-blowings that women had to boil, blue and dry and then iron into perfect folds for Da Man.

The hidden and unacknowledged work of women. 

Never ending.

30 Days - Day 29

I could do my head some serious injury as I read the daily newspaper and bang it off the nearest hard surface.

Yeah, I renewed my subscription about 3 months ago. Call me a sentimental old fool, but there's something about the 7.30 a.m. delivery to my wee red box on the pillar in the driveway, the breakfast, the paper propped up before me. I know The Telegram, our Newfoundland daily newspaper, is on its last legs. It's shrunk to the size of a postage stamp and could be read from slender cover to back page car ads in 10 minutes flat.

But!

Where would you ever get to chuckle over the ad up above? I would want a washer not telling but actually doing: like offloading the wash into the dryer automatically, then the dryer decanting and folding the contents when dry and putting the laundry away in drawers? Now they'd be talking alright.

And then, a shudder of horror as I read about Labrador City who are rebating the 11 cent tax on each cigarette to bring more trade to local businesses. Yes, you read that right.

Imagine, if you will, the sheer madness of a government encouraging people to die more cheaply.

Laundry Observations

What is it with me and laundry anyway? And here too.

I have two very fancy machines here for taking care of the dirties. Frontloading beauties.

With portholes for observation if you are so inclined.

When they were new I was so inclined. I spent a good month or two singing the praises of a deceased beloved aunt for leaving me a small but rather tidy inheritance in her will a couple of years ago. So I beamed beatifically and gratefully at the machines in their efficiency. Prior to then I had gone all primitive with a pair of manual elbow-grease intensive little guys.

This windfall has eased my life considerably by providing the funds to buy such swish and environmentally green machines and the services of an electrician (several actually, long story) to wire them up. Along with some other necessary but formerly unaffordable life enhancing items.

I like to hang my clothes outdoors in the stiff sea breezes but wonder why in Maude's green earth we still haven't invented a proper clothes pin. My spring loaded ones break and drop off the line at an alarming rate, so I use the old fashioned wood kind which can be hard to wield and a challenge to buy in our disposable society.

Whatever happened to washing soda? It would do a powerful job on cleaning clothes but I can't find it anywhere.

Like wise bluing – anyone remember bluing?

I remember my grandmother's ceiling clothes-drying rack that could be lowered or lifted in front of her big open fire by means of a complicated pulley on the wall. She would fit a huge amount of clothes on the long wooden dowels and then raise it up so you wouldn't run into it.

Whatever happened to airing cupboards? We had one in our house when I was growing up and each shelf had a label thumb tacked to the shelves identifying what was in there (it was very deep). I would love taking out my warm clothes in the morning.

Waxing a little nostalgic for the way things were today. In spite of all the labour - not to mention the downside of the soot and steam from the fires.

On second thoughts, we've never had it better. I just remembered my mother boiling my father's handkerchiefs. Ew.

Da Nose and Da Clothes

I'm totally amazed at how programmed I can be when it comes to marketing, even though I haven't had a television in over seventeen years.

I was telling someone the other day how my laundry always smells so wonderful, sheets, clothes, towels, and she asked me what detergent I use and I told her. And that was that. I thought.

And today I'm bringing in a clothes line full of tea-towels and towels and napkins and dishcloths and they're all smelling so wonderful that I stick my face into the laundry basket and inhale. And the penny drops, well - duh.

They smell so wonderful because there are blossoming lilacs all around the clothes line and the fresh sea air has been blowing through them all day long.

Just imagine! This kind of scent doesn't come in a bottle!

City Woman strikes again!