You were warned this was old lady stories. A this week and next week comment are called progress, yet both took a deep breath and acceptance on my part. I come from a family maybe one step away from pioneer. We may not have raised our own vegetables. We did buy from a farmer, bushels of them, and sat on a back porch to snap and peel and use them and put up for the winter. My dad taught animal husbandry and killed what I ate until I went off to college. My mother did her own housework and cooking and wouldn’t have considered someone else equal to the task.
You may have to sit down and rest after I tell you what was needed for the background to step one. Some just right day in spring, sunny, not too warm, my mother would rise and say to my dad, “Honey, put out the ladder. It’s time to wash the windows.” My first job was to go through the house and take down all the sheer curtain panels that hung in front of pull down shades. They were piled on the cot on the back screen porch where we all slept in the summer to be washed another day. The shades were then removed and left on the couch to be out of the way. We started washing on the west side of the house, moving around the compass, so the sun wouldn’t streak the windows as they dried. Mother, all five feet, worked on the outside with an old towel and a hose. I did the inside with a well wrung out rag and the admonition, “Now don’t drip on the floor.” Mother would tilt her head and tap the pane to show a spot I hadn’t cleaned to her satisfaction. After the water treatment, we polished both sides with sheets of newspaper. When the sun was overhead, we stopped for a light lunch, sweetened tea and a banana with peanut butter and salad dressing on an ice burg lettuce leaf. At the end of the day, I have to admit the glass did sparkle; however, I did not look forward to that chore as a life time job.
My solution was mostly to ignore the need. The young married second story rental apartment was too complicated to even contemplate, Four years in Dayton, we lived in a house at the end of a dirt road and had a well with a pump that cut off if too many faucets were opened at once. Swift again had upstairs windows as did Rice. I did do with Windex and paper towels the small panes in the three French doors that led to the side porch. Children had left hand prints and tongue marks. The two times the house was painted, the workers sprayed with a hose. That worked.
Then we moved to Swift. Thirteen single pane windows needed to be un-shuttered to the light. After the first year, grime looked evident, and I began to get a needy feeling. A friend I trusted rhapsodized one day about having her windows washed, and a light went off. Geek Window Cleaners (I love the name) became the 20th century equivalent of mother and me. Two able bodied young men (one does have a beard and a tattoo) arrive with buckets and squeegees. In forty-five minutes, inside and outside is done with something added to encourage streak free drying. I write a check with unwrinkled hands and say a heart felt thank you. I don’t mind at all where this step of progress has taken me.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: 1 Corinthians 13:12
Let Me Tell Ya 