Oh, how I loved those steam engines. They had sounds that were so unique. As the wheels turned you could hear the steam escaping. As they neared railroad crossings you could hear their whistles shouting “get out of my way!” At times you could smell the sulfur in the coal that powered these monsters.
We had two major railroads passing through our town, the Norfolk and Western and the Chesapeake and Ohio. The N&W passed about 100 yards from my home. There were several men in the neighborhood who worked for the railroads. One was actually an engineer. All of the little boys, including me, looked up to these men who kept the railroad running.
My mother hated those steam engines.
I don’t think we had even heard of a clothes dryer when I was a kid. We had four long, wire lines in our backyard on which mom hung freshly washed laundry to dry. I remember watching her do laundry and sometimes helping with the rinsing and “wringing.” The washer was on our open back porch, exposed to the weather. There were also two large, galvanized wash tubs. One was the first rinse as the laundry came out of the washer. The other was for a final rinse to be sure the soap was gone. Then the laundry was fed between two rubber rollers that squeezed out the water (wringers.) Finally, mom would hang the clean clothes on the freshly cleaned lines. They would stay there until they dried.
So, what does this have to do with mom hating the steam engines? Well, when one came roaring through our neighborhood 100 yards from our house it usually left a black layer of soot on her clean laundry. The sheets would often be almost black. Of course she hated them. Wouldn’t you? Oh, I forgot. There are no more steam engines and it would be hard to get soot into your clothes dryer, anyway.
