Audrey II - My Mother’s Wringer Washer

 

I despise and loathe turnip. I think it should be against the law to force people to eat turnip -  brussel sprouts too. We should have bumper stickers proclaiming, “save an appetite; kill a turnip.” On my 16^th birthday, my mother finally released me from her maternal subservience to turnip. What bliss! Free at last from the vegetable equivalent of a bowling ball. It was the best of times…sadly, it was the worst of times.

            Lurking in the basement, nay, skulking, gurgling, coughing, sputtering and spewing, it called me. It pleaded and begged in a plaintive little voice with a strangely ambiguous tone that suggested a remote sense of foreboding, but I was initially disarmed by the innocence of its plea.

“Louie…, feeeeeeeed meeeeeee.” Like Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors, it beckoned me to its side. There is only one thing I dislike more than turnip… Audrey II, my mother’s wringer washer.

            In our technologically advanced society, my mother must have felt some primordial loyalty to her wringer washer. She spoke regularly with her hibiscus and hydrangea, African violets and spider plants; by name in fact. Now she was communing with our home's satanic launderer. As we speak, there are probably covert gatherings near set-tubs and basins of Mothers Who Love Wringer Washers. They likely have a secret newsletter with the slogan, “Wringer, wringer, on the wall, who does the fairest washing of them all.”

            Like old soldiers, they gather around the basin and compare their battle scars. Years from now, they will tell their grandchildren of a time when three loads of whites could be washed in one load of water. In time, this idiom will replace the, “I walked 5 miles to school in snow this deep with holes in my boots” story. It will be a sad day indeed. Meanwhile, I will tell a different story.

            “Gary! Kids!” Again, shrieking from the basement, “Gary! Kids!” We rushed downstairs. There, in the corner, arms flailing like the robot in Lost in Space, my mother was being ‘eaten’ by Audrey II. My mother’s waist-length hair was being expunged from her head by Audrey II.

In a moment of panic, one does not think to hit the release bar. Audrey II was jumping and bouncing, chortling and cavorting as though it were auditioning for some pagan ritual known only to mechanical appliances. Audrey II’s rollers persisted in their demented assault on my mother’s head. It was not pretty. One cannot give too much emphasis to a declaration such as this.

            In the 23 years I lived at home, I never ever swore at my parents. I swore at Audrey. Not diminutively. Not in a reserved manner, not even with malice. I swore with apocalyptic vengeance! Truck drivers would blush. My pupils dilated to such a size, I appeared to be in a state of gleeful dementia. Saliva foamed and percolated as it slathered and dripped and flew out of my mouth in a volcanic frenzy. It was me against Audrey II - how to get my whites white versus how to eat my cotton whites courtesy of Beelzebub, the metal contraption from hell.

            The far side of the rollers can eat your cotton clothing faster than Brian Mulroney can make a patronage appointment. If it is a sock, it is now a sock approximately three feet long. Or how about that favourite white dress shirt that drifts hopelessly to the ends of the rollers, only to be liberally rinsed with that new cleaning agent - bearing grease; canapés and caviar if you're Audrey.

            The wringer washer is gone now, replaced by a modern automatic. My mother’s hair is fine, if not a little more elastic, and the bones in her hands have now healed. No more can we stand in front of Audrey, agitator engaged, lid off, and be soaked with volumes of soap-laden water.

            No more does the waist of a pair of jeans coil up at the sight of the rollers, create a cacophony of groans and then spit the water at you at 300 m.p.h. There are no more floods as a result of leaving the plug in the drainage basin. No more does the drip tray tip backwards and drain all the soap into your clear rinse water.

            I miss that wringer washer - but only insofar as I can tell a story about it. Now…about my father, his snowblower, and his wrist watches.