ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christy Lynne Trotter, a resident of Huber Heights, attended Sinclair Community College and Wright State University and earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Antioch University Midwest. Christy says the best thing about writing is to learn to write through the pain, the tears, the smiles and the happiness; to take real things and make those things your truth. Christy is an English adjunct instructor at Clark State Community College and works for Meijer as a shipping operations management personnel.
2014 SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNERS
• Best in Show: "The Evening News" by Peggy Barnes
• First Place Adult: "Grandma's Wringer Washer" by Christy Lynne Trotter
• Second Place Adult: "Our Internal Lives" Sarah Doebereiner
• Third Place Adult: "Tank You" Judy Whelley
• First Place Teen: "Carpool Book Club" Deborah Rocheleau
• First Place Youth: "27 Days of Suffering" Ben Kochensparger
• Second Place Youth: "Jenny Sais Quoi" Helen Sparrow
“Grandma’s Wringer Warsher”
I was five when the state dropped me off at my grandparents’ farm.
I stood at the end of the gravel driveway, with a small suitcase the color of pea soup at my feet. The lady from the welfare department, who I remember smelling of cinnamon, packed it for me, throwing in “only the essentials.” I considered Legos essential, and insisted that they make the move with me; and they did, nestled between pairs socks, a few tee shirts, and one set of pajamas.
I’d never been to my grandparents’ farm prior to that day, and as I stood at the end of the driveway, I remember feeling as though the entire world would swallow me if I blinked too fast. Two things saved me that day. One was my grandparents’ Jack Russell terrier, who was the first to greet me in the driveway. He was small, friendly, and licked my face when I bent down to pet him. He was white and tan in color, hence the name I gave him, Tater Tot.
Grandma called him Mutt on account of his fuzzy, wiry looking face covered with whiskers. Not that life on the farm was bad, but Tater Tot made it bearable. He became my dog, my responsibility, until the day he was hit by the mail truck. My grandparents let me cry for the month straight that I did, never once telling me that a boy, a man, shouldn’t shed such tears, especially over a dog.
Not one for wasted advice, the first words my grandmother spoke to me are words I still carry with me today. That day, standing in her driveway, I listened as she gave me a wisdom that saved me, even at age five: you can only judge a person’s worth by their hands.
When she first shared this bountiful piece of advice with me, I wasn’t sure what it meant, but as a man, I get it. I can’t compare my grandmother’s hands to those of anyone else. For a woman, she had rugged, used hands. She lived and worked on a farm all her life, the latter part of it alone. Her hands were calloused, knuckle bones crooked. Her words saved me because, as I grew older and watched her work, I knew my hands would become as important to the success of my life as breathing would. Yet, I’ve always felt that my hands could never match Grandma’s.
The thing that continues to startle and intrigue me about my grandmother is that for the better part of the time I lived with them, she washed our clothes in a basin, using an old wringer washer (the warsher, as she called it) that her mother used.
When I was a child, I’d watch her for hours on end. She’d take a whole day alone to wash one load. It would take another day to dry everything. She’d let the clothes soak in Borax, and then one by one, she’d wring each piece of clothing through the wringer five times. She’d wring, scrub, wring, rinse, wring, wring and wring again.
Even in the dead of winter, she’d do the laundry this way. And with no dryer, she’d hang the clothes out to dry – a thing my grandfather hated, at least in the winter. Sometimes the wooden clothes pins would freeze into the fabric of a shirt or a pair of pants. I’d then be called in to hold said item over a small kerosene lamp flame to thaw the pin. On occasion, something would catch fire. I wore more than my share of underwear with holes in them.
My grandfather despised the process. “There is nothing worse than putting on overalls,” he’d say, “that are as stiff as the face of a mountain rock. Icicles in your britches makes for a hateful man.”
I knew what he meant, but I tried not to be hateful about my stiff britches. I accepted the way Grandma did our wash, but I never fully comprehended why she did it the way she did.
One year, Grandpa bought them a GE washer and dryer set. Grandma wouldn’t let him install them. That set sat in our shed for a good 15 years. It killed my grandfather, especially in the winter, to watch Grandma go out on Saturday after breakfast, wearing her winter coat and boots, stand outside for hours, hunched over the wringer. It didn’t kill him because of the stiff britches, mind you. She’d return before dinner, her hands cracked and bleeding from the cold weather and water. I’d help her peel potatoes for dinner because she couldn’t wrap her hands around them.
As I began my senior year in high school, Grandpa won the battle on installing the washer and dryer. By then, Grandma was almost 85 and couldn’t lift the laundry basket, much less bend over the old wringer that she loved so.
The day she died, I asked her why she never used the washer and dryer before to make her life easier.
“Osh,” she said (she called me Osh because she couldn’t say my full name; she always dropped the J because she had no upper front teeth), “People will tell you that there is a better, easier way to do something. Sometimes, there is no right or wrong. There just is. I just am. I learned, at the age you were when you came to us, to do warsh that way. I never cared to change. It made me stronger, made me last longer.”
Last long, she did. Grandma died at the age of 102, a month ago.
That day, she added, “All that, plus it pissed your granddad off to no end. He was enough of a hard working man, I suppose, but I never saw his hands bleed. That’s the true form of a man: one whose hands will bleed from life, but keeps working through the blood.”
“So you put icicles in his britches?”
“Yes, sir, I did.” She smiled. “That toughened up his ’ol butt. Eventually.” Grandma closed her eyes. “I think I’ll go see him now. I apologize for being so stubborn. Take care of things.”
***
I stand in the same place in the driveway as I stood the first day I arrived, 30 years ago. I have options to weigh, decisions to make. Grandma left me the farm and I have debated heavily on selling it. Even after years of watching and helping under their watchful eyes, I am not sure I can run it as well as they did.
I live a few towns over where I run a successful veterinary clinic. I’ve saved horses, dogs, cats, goats, a pet pig, and have birthed new life a hundred times over. The job brings me happiness, yet my hands still haven’t bled as my grandmother’s did. Or maybe, they just bleed differently.
The farmhouse itself would bring me no money. A realtor told me it’s the land that holds promise. A retail company offered a considerable amount of money for it, but I don’t need money. From the driveway, I can see the small, fenced in area where both Grandma and Grandpa are buried, right beside Tater Tot. They wanted buried on their land, near their home, the only place either knew for the near 75 years of their life together.
I leave the comfort of the driveway and walk toward the shed. It could use a fresh coat of paint and a new door, but otherwise, it’s as sound as the day I helped my grandfather build it, if you consider me sitting in the grass playing with my Legos while I listened to him saw boards and pound nails, helping. The door creaks open and a mass of cobwebs greet my forehead as I walk through. Upon instinct, I reach to the left and flick the light switch on. A bulb hanging from a wire chord attached to the center ceiling beam comes to life.
The shed is empty except for a few boxes lining one wall. I see a box marked “Josh.” I walk over and pick it up. Setting it on the makeshift metal countertop my grandfather built, I think back to the day he installed it. He sliced the back of his hand open on one of the sharp edges. I remember seeing blood drip down his arm as he said words I’d never heard before.
Thinking about it now, I’m not sure Grandma ever saw his blood. I open the box and peer inside. Smiling, I pull out three golf trophies from high school, a Ziploc bag of Boy Scout patches, a Nerf gun, and a plastic bag. The bag has a hole in it and the contents fall to the metal countertop. Legos. Once, Grandma tried to throw my Legos away. I was about 13 and she decided to spring clean the house. I happened to catch her carrying a box to the trash and stopped her, asking what was inside.
“Your old toys. Legos,” she replied as she held the box away from me. “You’re too old to play with Legos, Josh.”
“You don’t understand, Grandma,” I said, as I pulled at the box. “They aren’t to play with. They are to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“My parents,” I said.
She thought for a moment and I remember her eyes softened in a way I’d never seen. She handed me the box. “Keep them, honey. Keep it all.”
I take a yellow piece of Lego and stick it in my pocket. My mind drifts back to the task at hand, selling the land. Cut my losses, save the heartache, sell? Forget the memories, save the hands? Some things have no price. I flip off the light, close the shed door, and walk across the yard to the cemetery.
I bend down to Tater Tot’s headstone, still standing in the earth, yet slightly worn and faded from years of sun and rain. On the day we buried Tater Tot, my grandfather told me that when I was at school during the day, Grandma would sit on the porch with Tater Tot on her lap and watch the laundry dry on the line.
She’d stroke his head and ears and he’d lie quietly until he heard the school bus coming down the road. Then she’d let him down, and he’d run out and meet me. Tater, Grandpa said, never seemed to mind Grandma’s rough hands because he knew she had a kind heart.
I place the yellow Lego on Tater Tot’s small headstone and look at the palms of my hands. The lines tell me it’s time to come home.
About the Author