Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I certainly had my share of household chores. I would sometimes receive an allowance for completing my assigned tasks, but mostly my dad would forget. In his (and my mom's) defense, I was rarely denied a little extra spending money if I asked. I knew when I could ask and I knew when I shouldn't... and that was a little game I played with my parents expendable income.
In the summer, at least once a week (when I wasn't gently reminded), I would fill this relic up with gasoline and push it all over our front and back lawns. This was a job that I inherited from my older brother once he graduated from household chores to employment in the "real" world. I didn't mind this too much. It was outside. It didn't take
that long to complete. And sometimes, if the nearby Nabisco factory was in production, the air was
filled with the delicious smell of baking cookies. It took my mind off that fact that I was cutting the grass, instead I mentally wandered through a magical world of 24-hour cookie ovens and stacks and stacks of Oreos and Chips Ahoy! (When I visited Walt Disney World for the first time, I was immediately taken back to this childhood scene as I passed the Main Street Bakery. It was only later that I learned that the wonderful "freshly baked cookies" scent was fake and Disney pumps it into the air to entice passers-by.
Bastards!)
Every Wednesday evening, after dinner, I would wend my way around our house and empty the trash cans and wastepaper baskets in each room. (We called the trash receptacle in the bathrooms "wastepaper cans," but all the
other rooms had "trash cans." I don't know why that was... but that's how The Pincuses lived.) Once that portion of the task was finished, I'd drag the big metal trash cans that rested at the side of our house down to the curb for collection the following morning. When I got home from school on Thursday, I would drag the empty cans back up the driveway to the side yard where they would remain until next Wednesday. (One day, there was an "incident" involving trash collection that you can read about
here.)
While I was making my rounds on trash duty, my mom was doing what 1960s moms did. She was cleaning the kitchen. This was what society had deemed as "woman's work." My mom did "woman's work." Not happily. Not unhappily. She just did it. She did the grocery shopping. She did the cooking. She did the serving. And she did the cleaning up after dinner. Looking back, I remember that my mom always ate dinner last, sometimes just sitting down as my father was using a buttered slice of bread to wipe up the last drops of gravy from his plate before lighting an after-dinner cigarette (as opposed to the several "during dinner" cigarettes he enjoyed). My dad, my brother and I would exit the dinner table, leaving my mom to finish her meal alone and eventually clear the table and load the dishwasher alone, as well. (Boy, the Pincus men certainly were little shits!)
Our house did not have a basement or a separate laundry room. We didn't even have a dining room, as sometime in the swingin' 60s, my parents converted the designated dining room to a den, with a sofa, a chair for my father and a TV. That left our tiny 10' x 10' kitchen jammed with a clothes washer and dryer along with our family table and four chairs. Our house
did have a dishwasher, though. It was a
portable dishwasher with a butcher-block top that my mother put to good use. The dishwasher was on wheels, so during meal preparations, she'd maneuver it near the sink and chop up.... well, whatever it is that moms chop up when they make dinner. After dinner, and once the top was cleaned, my mom would put all the dinner dishes, as well as any pots and utensils used in preparation, into the depths of the dishwasher. With liquid detergent added somewhere inside, she'd extract a large garden hose-looking tube from the back and connect it to the kitchen faucet. For the next hour or so, the kitchen faucet was off limits! You want a glass of water? Get it from a bathroom! You want to wash an apple (like I actually ate
apples! Ha!) Too bad! Again, use a bathroom sink or tough it out. My mom
loved that dishwasher and, as far as the rest of the family was concerned, it was
her dishwasher. After all, no one else in the family knew how to use it. We didn't
need to. That was "woman's work" and my mom was the only woman in Chez Pincus.
Somewhere around the time I entered high school, my mom got a job in a women's clothing store. My dad was, at first, not happy about this development. My mom, however, grew to do whatever she wanted to do,
regardless of my father's opinion... and my father knew it. Once my mom started working on a regular basis, family dinners became a thing of the past. Our freezer became stocked with TV dinners and other assorted meals of convenience. Pizza was a common dinner. While my brother and I would enjoy the cheese-laden pie my mom brought home from the pizza place next to her store, my dad would frown, grumble and make himself a cold-cut sandwich, smoke a couple of cigarettes and complain about how much he
hated pizza, although I never
ever saw my father actually
eat a slice of pizza.
Along with "mom-prepared" family dinners, other "mom" services disappeared. No more laundry. You want clean clothes? My mom gave
one lesson in how to operate the washing machine and dryer. My brother and I paid close attention and soon we were doing our own laundry. My dad, the "breadwinner" (And breadwinners don't do laundry. They.... they.... win bread!) had no intention of washing his own clothes. He fought in World War II,
ferchrissakes! He didn't defeat Hitler for the honor of laundering his own socks! My dad would often persuade my brother or me to add
his dirty clothes to our batch. And, of course, we'd oblige. With family dinners a thing of the past, my mom's portable dishwasher was used less and less. It was only when the sink became an overflowing mess of plates and forks and the occasional pan (my brother figured out the secret of making grilled cheese sandwiches), that my mom would run the dishwasher. Still, no one else in the house knew how to load and operate the dishwasher. It was still my mom's thing.
When I got married, I wanted to be as helpful as I could be around our house. I wasn't going to be like my father, sitting back and watching my wife do all the housework while I smoked cigarettes and watched TV. (Well, I don't smoke, but I still had plans of watching TV.) I vacuumed and took the trash out and, briefly mowed the lawn... until
we hired a guy to mow the lawn. As a matter of fact, we have also
hired someone to clean our house on a regular basis. But there was still laundry! I had remembered the basics of doing laundry from the quick lesson my mom gave when I was a teenager. I made the offer to my new bride and, reluctantly, she let me take a shot at it. Our washing machine was much different that the one at my parent's house and the dryer...? The dryer had more buttons and dials and settings than the control panel of a commercial airplane. So, after I put one of Mrs. Pincus' favorite sweaters into the dryer, shrinking it to a size suitable for a Barbie doll, I was barred from laundry duty 'til death do us part. I wasn't
about to ask to use the dishwasher.
Mrs. Pincus and I have been married for 38 years. In those 38 years, I have never loaded, closed, added detergent to, or operated the dishwasher in our kitchen. If someone came in, pointed a gun at me and ordered me to show them how to run our dishwasher, I would just shrug and tell them they might as well pull the trigger right now. I'd sooner be able to show them how to bake a cake... and I don't know how to do that
either, but, I'm sure
somewhere, there are
printed directions. The
dishwasher? Well, Mrs. P
instinctively knows how to work it, just like she knows all the right questions to ask doctors and repairmen. She just
knows. Good thing, too... 'cause
I don't have those instincts. So, while I offer my (minimal) assistance in making salads for dinner, carrying packages from the car and carrying laundry (that I
don't do) up from the basement, the dishwasher falls into the "appliance" category. As far as I'm concerned, when I was flagged from using the washing machine, I took that to mean
all household appliances.
Recently, an ongoing cacophony of uncharacteristic "clanky" noises coming from our 25-year old dishwasher let us know that we should probably start looking for a replacement before it is
totally out of commission. Coincidentally, the ice maker in our equally-as-old refrigerator ceased working and, along with the various broken shelf brackets and cracked drawer guides, a new refrigerator would be a good idea, too. On Memorial Day weekend, Mrs. P and I wandered around the large appliance department at Best Buy and settled on a shiny new dishwasher and a shiny new refrigerator from the good folks at Samsung (makers of the TV in our bedroom and both of our cellphones.) Arrangements for delivery were made and in a few days, the Pincuses entered the 21st century of kitchen convenience. The refrigerator is a French door model with a through-the-door water and ice dispenser and a large drawer that houses a reach-in freezer. It is a far cry from the narrow, avocado green icebox in my parent's kitchen. The dishwasher, with its gleaming, stainless-steel front, has spacious racks and a cool flat shelf at the top for things like lids and spatulas that you don't want flying around during a cycle and smashing into your dishes.
On Day One with the new dishwasher, I don't know what possessed me, but I asked Mrs. Pincus to show me how to use it. I figured: "How difficult could it be? Technology has become simpler as time goes on, so the new dishwasher should be a snap! And sure enough, it was. My wife showed me what pieces she preferred go on the bottom rack and what should be placed in the protective top rack. She showed me where the detergent goes and how much to use. (First, she had to show me where the jug of dishwashing liquid is kept.) She explained the simple, silent, push-button operation. Then, just close the door and —
BINGO! — magic occurs. A cool feature we discovered is when the cycle is finished, the door automatically pops open to help in the drying process.
Mrs. P watched as I loaded the new dishwasher. She observed the way I squeezed the liquid into the little reservoir and snapped the lid of the compartment shut. I pushed two buttons —
just two! — on the control panel, shut the door and the dishwasher whirred to life. Actually, it was pretty quiet. Next morning, after turning on the coffee maker, I emptied the dishwasher. I put our dinner dishes back in the proper cabinets, the glasses in their cabinets and the flatware in the correct drawers. There were a few items that, despite living in this house for nearly four decades, I had no idea where in our kitchen cabinets they are stored. I left them on the kitchen counter for Mrs. P to put away when she woke up. But —
goddamn! — I acquired a new skill!
Now almost every evening, I fill and start the dishwasher and every morning I empty it and put our dishes and flatware away (except for the things I have no idea where they belong). Once again, I have chores.
Allowance, however, is still iffy.
