Friday, August 22, 2008

Thank you

Katherine sent me the name of the socialist candidate for president. Norman Thomas. Did you know this, or did you google it? He was what seemed an elderly man when I massaged his knees but then anybody over forty seemed elderly in those days.

boardguri asked 'what's mangling' A mangle is a substitute for an iron. It is a huge machine. There are two slabs of polished stone. They weigh tons. You put, for example, a sheeet on a hardwood role (about three or four times as large as the rolling pin in the kitchen). On one of these you roll the folded sheet that two women had stretched into shape for the mangle. A lever on the machine is pulled and the stone on one side is raised enough to put this roll between the two (maybe marble) slabs.Then you do the same on the other side and then cheap labor (one of us four children) roll this machine back and forth until the person putting the sheets on the roles is ready to do two more sheets. Does any one understand a word of this. When I have learned how to include a line drawing in my blog I will try to illustrate it.

7 comments:

Mary said...

As much as I hate to say this, I have seen this machine before. However, it was in a museum. I'm sorry! I think you did a very good job of describing it... its hard for those of us who grew up in the age of automation to imagine have to roll sheets through rocks to get them flat.

Meghan said...

Here is a picture of a mangle: http://dickens.stanford.edu/images/Issue%202/mangle.jpg

Thank you for explaining!

I can't wait for your next entry.

Katherine Bennett said...

I found the name through Google...

hello haha narf said...

i am 37 and when i was 18 i worked at a private club for 3 months in their laundry. all table cloths and sheets went though a HUGE mangle. huge automatic machine. my biggest concern was to not fall asleep standing up, feeding the machine because i was afraid my long hair would get caught up in it!

Anonymous said...

I remember mangles! My mother had and electric one.

Candace said...

I know what a mangle is. I used to operate one when I worked at a dry cleaners about 16 or so years ago. We did sheets, pillow cases, the long roller towels and a few other things like aprons and so forth.

Georgia Hardstark said...

Suddenly my annoyance of having to walk ALL THE WAY downstairs with my heavy load of laundry doesn't seem like such a chore.

I wonder what laundry will be like 60 years from now...