Floor Project, Uninstallment I

     Here I am standing on the fourth floor.

 

    Wait, I am on the ground floor.  How can it be the fourth floor?  No, there aren’t three levels of basement below me.  Still, it’s the fourth floor.

    Well, the third floor looked like this.

         The countertops (pictured here) matched the floor.  That one didn’t last too long.

    The second floor looked like shag carpet, but it was linoleum.

    

 And the first floor looks like this:

  

     Actually, this probably isn’t the first floor, maybe the second floor.  The first floor was probably tongue and groove fir.  The old linoleum was probably installed sometime in the late forties or early fifties, after the house was moved to the present site.  I barely remember when this “first” floor was “the” floor.

      The one memory I do have is Monday morning washdays when the white-with-red-trim Maytag washer was rolled from porch into the kitchen, close enough for a hose to reach from the kitchen sink faucet to the washer and the two rinse tubs sitting on a bench adjacent to the washer.

      The washing machine ringer rotated 360 degrees so that the water rung from the clothes coming out of the washer ran back into the machine while the rung-out clothes curled down into rinse tub one.  Rotate the ringer and feed the clothes from the rinse tub into the ringer.  Keep your fingers out of it!  (There was a stick to use for feeding small stuff, socks for example, into the ringer without endangering your fingers.)

     The water would run back into rinse tub number one.  The rinsed clothes would drop into rinse tub number two.  Rotate the ringer once more, feed the clothes into the ringer once more and the thrice rung clothes dropped into the laundry basket ready for the clothesline.

     Grab the clothespin bag and head for the line.  Wipe the bird poop, dust, and rust from the clothesline with a rag.  Hang up the clothes.  When that job was done, the second load in the washing machine was about ready for the ringer.

     Mom always started with the white stuff, underwear, shirts, sheets maybe, when the wash water was freshest and hottest and full power Clorox.  She ended with the work jeans and greasiest stuff.  The same wash and rinse water was used throughout. 

     When the washing was done, a hose from the bottom of the washing machine, hanging from its hook to an eye on the machine, was connected to a garden hose, the hose run out the door, into the yard.   The drain hose was let down to the floor, the garden hose stretched out and the greasy wash water exited the machine and ran into the yard.

     A special dipper, a handle on a lard can, was used to dip the water from the rinse tubs into the washing machine until the tubs were light enough to lift and empty into the washing machine, and the rinse water followed the wash water out the door.

      The washing machine and rinse tubs were then rolled back onto the porch where the clothesbaskets would join them after the ironing, folding, and stowing of clean clothes were all done.  In those days, folks ironed the sheets and pillowcases.  Mom got a “mangle” that was 110 volts. (I’m thinking the Maytag washer must have been 32 volt and converted to 110 after the arrival of the REA.)  The first few times she used the mangle, it was up at our neighbors to the north, the Pratts, who got electricity some time before we did.  The mangle was used mainly on the sheets.

      The mangle rests in its corner in the basement waiting for someone from Antiques Roadshow to discover it.

    I remember two incidents involving washday.  One day I was standing on a chair by the washing machine playing with the hose that was spouting hot water into the washing machine.  Somehow, the hose got lose and the stream of hot water hit my bare belly.  The water was so hot it blistered my skin.  It was the first time I remember using Burn Allay.  I can still smell the greasy stuff.

     My second memory, the one that brings up floor number one, was once when a neighbor girl was hired to help with the housework and the children.  It must have been Monday.  Sue was in charge of the washing and I was helping her.  

     Somehow, something went amiss, the drain hose got knocked off its perch, something.  Water ran all over the floor before Sue saw it.  Pandemonium. The leak was corrected, and then the mopping and containment began.  I remember the water running towards the refrigerator and the door.  Sue allowed, after it was all over, that the floor wasn’t level.  That “first” floor was the one that got flooded.

     Over the years, the other three floors came and went.  Apparently, they weren’t dangerous to remove, dangerous meaning full of asbestos fiber.  Conventional wisdom says the black stuff contains asbestos and should be avoided, particularly the dust produced during the removal. 

     Standard practice calls for covering up the asbestos-laden surface with a thin underlayment, which is what the previous installers did.  The only sign left of floor number two is in the threshold between porch and kitchen.  The remnants of floor number three exist only as counter top of the cabinet and a shelf in another cabinet.

     Like many jobs, the actual work isn’t so bad once the preparation work is done.  In this case, the refrigerator and the wood-burning stove got moved to the dining room sometime in February or March.   The big gorilla, the kitchen range, oven, dishwasher succumbed without too much trouble.    

     Floor number four is now gone.  New underlayment and floor number five are in the works.  I’m not exactly in on the ground floor with this project, but these things do happen eventually, when it is too wet to farm.