Dish Washing

Growing up in our family meant that I had to wash the dinner dishes every night that I was at home. Once I started working at a diner after school, the dish washing only occurred on my days off. My siblings got dishwashing duty on the nights I was at work.

All five of us kids had different chores at one time or another. Until Jenny was old enough to dry the dishes, the dish drying fell to my brother Kenny. I don’t know how old Jeni was when she had to start drying. She was at least ten years old, and I was fourteen. I remember she was old enough to do a better job at drying than she could have done, and it caused me no end of grief. If the dish were not dried properly and my dad came across it when he went to get a dish out of the cupboard for any reason, we had to wash the entire stack so we could, “learn to do the job right.”

After that happened three times within two weeks, I told my sister to go do something else and I would wash and dry the dishes myself. As a side note, years later my mother told me, “ Your sister is lazy with her chores, and it is because you kicked her out of the kitchen.”

My sister didn’t seem lazy as an adult so I’m fairly sure she overcame her ‘lazy streak.’ I have no remorse for kicking her out of the kitchen, it was a matter of expediency. In writing this essay, I realize that it was no wonder I spent most of my career trying to be perfect. The lack of perfection at our house meant washing clean dishes so my sister could learn to dry them right.

Part of washing dishes meant clearing the table, scrapping food left on plates (this was rare) into the trash can, and then stacking the dishes a certain way on the counter so they could be washed in the proper order. At the time, the rule in our house was all glasses were washed first, then plates, then bowls, then silverware, then cookware.

Dishwashers were around in the 1950s but were considered a luxury item until they became more affordable in the 1970s. I got married and left home in 1974 so if our home ever got a dishwasher, it was after I left home.

Still the way we washed dishes in the house in Ney was much easier than dish washing at our house in Jewel. In Jewel, Kenny and I had to pump the water, heat it on the stove, pour the hot water into two dishpans, and then wash, rinse, and dry dishes. We lived in the Jewel house when I was 9, 10, and 11 years old. We tried to get all of the dishes washed and dried within five songs on the radio. When we were finished with all of the dishes, we would dump the dish water and rinse water out in the garden.