The Pleasure of Washing Dishes

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina–(Weekly Hubris) —9/19/11—I’m challenging myself to write an essay, in the manner of two masters of the form, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, to do an interesting piece on an apparently uninteresting subject. What more unlikely a subject is there than . . . dish-washing?

If my dad had never found his name on a KP roster in a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in McDowell County, North Carolina, I might have been denied the delightful/tiresome toil of washing dishes and pots and pans. In a move to give my mom some down time after the supper hour, he posted a dish-washing schedule for my brothers and me, teaming us up in pairs, with one to wash and one to dry and put away.

With seven sons, one daughter, and her husband to cook for, Mom faced mounds of dishes and kitchen ware to wash with every meal she prepared. If our elementary school had had a lunch room, she would have been spared a second turn of dish-washing before setting about putting supper on the table. Our school was close enough for us to walk home for lunch, though, and that meant a second batch of dishes to wash all year long.

Dad wanted to spare her a third. “We all need to pitch in and help her,” he said as he read the names on his roster, his not among them. Later, with Mom’s illness and their nest empty, his name would move to the top of the list, eliciting more than ample joshing and kidding by his long-suffering offspring.

I teamed with Jim, next in birth order after me and, at first, grumblingly attacked a huge pile of glasses, flatware (we had no fancy silverware, not even for Sunday dinners with relatives or the preacher), plates, and pots and pans. From outside, as we pulled our assigned duty, came the gleeful sounds of our siblings and neighbor kids playing games—tag, hide and seek, Red Rover, or some other childhood favorite.

We could trade weeks or days if we found someone willing to swap—the assigned duty was for a week. If we couldn’t make a deal, Mom, not Dad, filled in. He had settled in the livingroom, another Camel surrounding him in smoke, and flipped through the pages of his newest shaped note hymnal, scouting a new song to have the Laurel Springs Baptist Church try.

I escaped his KP roster when I enlisted in the U S Air Force. Within a few days, I found my name on a new one. Too much of a tenderfoot to know not to tarry in getting to the mess hall, I was hustled off to join other latecomers in the most dreaded job, washing trays, cups, and flatware. The job was a sweaty one, steam issuing from a noisy washer and rising from sinks. By the time the day ended, my shoes, socks, cap, and overalls were soaking wet.

As I walked back to the barracks to dig out dry clothes, I recalled the mostly cheery time Jim and I had had pulling KP at home. I was almost willing to resume sharing a home containing a smoky Camel.

My first assignment following graduation from radar school at Keesler Air Force Base, took me to Puerto Rico, where, as an enlisted man, I was still subject to KP duty. An airman with small change could buy his way out of such odious work as sweating in a mess hall kitchen when he could be lolling under a palm tree sipping rum. On this spectacular island amidst such beauty were “peons” willing, yea eager and thankful, to wash dishes, their poverty-stricken lives being less bitter because of the pittance we junior-grade capitalists paid them. Even now I shudder at the thought of my role as an exploiter. I could have paid far better than the “going rate.”

At this point it must surely appear that I’ve mistitled my essay. But wait, Patient Reader, for I fully intend to keep my promise. Courtship, marriage, and special circles of friends transformed the experience of washing dishes. As I found during my courtship and early years of marriage (before a rare muscle disease brought an end to my wife’s housekeeping chores), washing dishes with someone I loved provided a quiet time for reviewing a day’s event or an opportunity to plan ahead. When dinner guests such as a niece or the wife of a dear friend volunteered to help with the dishes, I relished the role of a dish-washing host. What better time for a relaxed visit and pleasurable chat?

It was out of such moments with my wife and guests that an installed dishwasher in our homes became a hiding place for many cookbooks for which we lacked shelf space. Although we had looked forward to having a dishwasher in our new home in Clemson, we quickly grew tired of its irksome noises and time-eating habits. Loaded and set a-going while our guests remained at table finishing off a bottle of wine while engaging in playful or serious conversation, the dishwasher went about its job spraying, sploshing, clinking, pumping, and draining. Offended by its unavoidable and natural noises, we shut it down and converted it into a reserve library.

It was a pleasure getting back to washing our dishes by hand. When there was no chat to enjoy, there was music to brighten the task. What better work-hands could one ask for than Bach, Mozart. Handel, Beethoven, Dave Brubeck, or Doc Watson?

Yet rewarding or pleasant chat and spirit-lifting music proved just part of my pleasure of washing dishes by hand. I found that, though my hands were engaged, my mind wasn’t, and thus I could work on a line I needed for a poem in progress or a sentence or more to revise for an essay underway.

And so, I urge you to turn to those glasses, silverware, and pots and pans with relish, realizing as you do that vital parts of your being may well be energized by shutting down your dishwasher.

Truly . . . how often do you have super-clean hands and an active mind? At the same time?

And that extra space for books is a real bonus.