I was a mutant teenage housekeeper

I was stuck with doing girl’s chores when I was a boy.

At least that’s how I looked at housework before I became “liberated.”

You see, I was one of four boys born to Louis and Sybil Penkava. Our little sister, Jeanne, didn’t come along until I was 15, which was a bit too late to save me from washing dishes, sweeping floors, dusting furniture and hanging out the laundry.

That’s alright, Jeanne. You made up for it by taking care of our parents in their later years.

Back then, I looked at housework as jobs for females. We macho boys were supposed to do outdoor stuff like mowing the yard, washing the car and feeding the chickens. Hoeing weeds in the garden was also on that list, I suppose, but I avoided that chore whenever I could.

But housework was our fate, due to there being no sister until much later. 

I had a schedule with my two older brothers, Dave and Ron, to wash and dry the dishes. One would wash, the other dry and the third had that meal off. And you can believe, there was plenty of grunting and growling during the process.

“I’m waiting on a dish to dry. What’s taking so long?”

“There’s fried egg burned into this pan. I’m having to scrap it out. If you can do better, here’s the SOS.”

Or something like that. 

Mama used to leave early on Saturday mornings to do her shopping. She would make out a list of chores and put it on the kitchen table. 

Most of those mornings I would lie in bed until about 11, then spring up, wolf down some cereal and jump on the list with the goal of marking off the items before Mama got home.

I didn’t mind hanging out the laundry on the clothesline since it was outside work — making it almost manly, when you think about it. There was a knack to spreading out a shirt upside-down and clipping a clothespin on each side, allowing the breeze to dry the garment.

Mama taught me the science of ironing. She showed me how to run the steam iron on a shirt, doing the back first then folding over each side to iron it, being careful to not make creases to the back. 

I learned later that there are as many ways to iron a shirt as there are laundresses — or in my case, launderers. I became particular about pressing a shirt or pair of pants without leaving any wrinkles or burn marks.

When I was in high school and needed money for weekends, I asked Mama if I could iron the laundry for pay. She was ecstatic to have a full-time ironer but couldn’t promise to pay me on a regular basis.

So I would spend the evening after supper pressing a load of clothes Mama had washed that day. By 10 o’clock or so, I would have all the laundry hung on hangers to put in closets.

“I don’t have any money now,” Mama would say. “I spent most of it buying groceries for you boys.”

Instead of cash in hand, my payment was usually the use of the family car to drive to the Blue Mist, the favorite hangout of most of my friends. If I had a quarter, I would go inside, find a booth and order a coffee, waiting until my buddies began showing up.

While they were watching a movie, bowling or just cruising downtown, I would be sitting at my booth nursing my coffee, which the waitress was kind enough to keep warmed.

I don’t say this to elicit sympathy. After all, I could have been at home watching “Gunsmoke” and “Have Gun Will Travel.”

Instead, after a couple of hours, my friends would begin arriving and I would wave them over to my booth.

“Hey, watcha been doin’?” I’d ask.

“Not much, just cruisin’ and circlin’ Sherwood,” one of them would answer. “I saw your old girlfriend. She was with that guy, you know who I’m talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, whatever. She wasn’t my type, anyhow.”

It’s funny, though. I once saw an old girlfriend and noticed her fancy white blouse. 

“I like your blouse,” I said. “It must be tough to iron.”

She gave me a funny look. She just didn’t know I was a clothes pressing fool.

Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com