A pressing memory?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am pretty good. Although the past two nights as I have finished my bike ride, I have witnessed two pair of glowing green eyes about 3 feet off the ground staring back at me from the hydrangea field. This field is about 200 yds from our front door. No those four eyes don’t belong to a pair of ghosts, or two really tall raccoons. It is a pair of assassin deer stalking me; coming ever closer, moving in for the kill. Am I worried? Nah. Just another 100 yards closer and I will walk out on my front porch early one late fall morning and I will bag me some venison. You don’t threaten a man on his own property without some serious repercussions.

You said what, Roger?, readership has reached an important milestone. This past week the 12,000 pair of eyes has perused these missives that I enjoy putting together each week. Thank you for your support. If you are a frequent reader, feel free to become a follower by clicking some line off to the right -à. I don’t know if it helps build readership, but it does give a face to people who really enjoy the blog and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling as I write.

Big doings in the Sharritt household this past gray November week. The lovely Miss Beverly has been hard at work making something for someone that involves fabric. I would share more but it is a secret. Also, it is a secret for someone who often reads the blog. So I hope that you will understand my furtiveness in this situation. Just know that someone will be very surprised and very pleased with the results of Miss Beverly’s artistic vision and handiwork. Is it you? Come now, you know that I can’t tell you that. Patience friend, please have a little patience.

On Tuesday evening, while frantically working with a nearing deadline, the lovely Miss Beverly looked at me with her lovely eyes and said, “I just want to say that I wish we would have kept that rolling iron 27 years ago.”

The incident of the rolling iron is one of the seminal events that our young married life was built upon. It was an event that showed us the stark differences in personality that would have to be compromised through in order to become one as our married life matured through the years. Thankfully, we have not often become a couple that marked victories and defeats in the marital balance sheet, taking care to keep a most careful ledger. There is no bitterness or rancor that has festered through the years of this seminal event. It has become one of the myths of our marriage.

Back when we were young and newly married, we loved to go to auctions. The thrill of the hunt was intoxicating. Stalking other people’s junk, finding their treasures, preparing to pay pennies for what was rightfully theirs, all combined for heady fun. Often times, these auctions were estate sales. Loved ones had passed and had so many accumulated knick-knacks, towels, and dish ware that the heirs could not possibly absorb it all. So after Billy Bob and Bobby Sue had pulled out the good silver, china, and quilts, the rest was piled on tables out in the yard for the neighbors and the curious to stake their claim on the remains. Every once in a while you would stumble across an auction where the heirs could not play nicely, and divide up the good stuff amicably. Each of as many as a dozen sides sure that Mom and Dad would want them to have the Mercedes, or the one carat diamond ring. Each one just as sure, prepared to state under oath that mom had said, just a week before her demise, “I want you have take the pie safe, when I’m gone.”

These auctions were a study in family dynamics. Sisters pitted against brothers, standing immovable at strategic spots in the auctioneer’s line of vision. Their arms encircled their purses. Their checkbooks grasped in white knuckled panic. Eyes danced between adversary and item. One could see brains doing the accounting of love. The careful observer could see the signs quickly, and really push the suspense to a climax by throwing a “uninterested” third party bid at a pivotal moment. This diabolical action would cause the head and heart computers working furiously at full capacity to nearly explode. You ask what we did before facebook and the internet. This is it. On Thursday, we would look for the auctions in the paper. On Saturday, we would get up and go watch some people.

The auction in question was a very low key affair; no drama. Which isn’t completely true, the lovely Miss Beverly and I brought our own. Things were progressing nicely. We had gotten a very nice green overstuffed rocking chair, and a TV. We were in solid agreement, in perfect lockstep, when the seeds of controversy were sown. It was a fairly large accumulation of stuff to be auctioned this day. Every auctioneer knows that you have to keep a certain momentum going or the crowds will lose interest and drift away. Following the laws of economics, supply will swamp demand and they will be selling wheelbarrows full of junk for a quarter.

To combat boredom and auction fatigue, they opened up two rings. Bev and I separated and I suddenly lost focus. I will admit that I love technologically complex contraptions that solve one small problem. If I were to deny it, I would be proven a liar by a simple perusal of my craigslist search list; unimog, big green egg, tandem bikes, shopsmith etc. . .

On this fine summer day, I saw the thing that would make everything right with the world. My discovery was an epiphany. The clouds were breaking up and a single shaft of sunlight shown down illuminating an automatic industrial sized steam roller iron.

This is what the Sharritt household needed. I hate ironing. Bev had never shown a desire to iron. Someday we might have jobs that required nicely pressed clothing. This was what we needed. The problem was there was no time to consult with the lovely Miss Beverly. It was the next item up for bid. To run and find her in the other auction ring, bring her over, explain the wonderful advantages to having an automatic steam roller iron, and decide on the appropriate highest bid, it would have all taken too long and they would auctioning the old golf bag with a rusty putter and driver poking out of the top.

This situation demanded swift and decisive action. I was stunned when they had trouble getting a starting bid of $50. The caller lowered expectations to $25 then $10. Still, no one started us out. Suddenly in the grips of inspiration, I blurted out “a dollar.” The dollar bid is the equivalent of saying “I will take it off your hands. Let’s get moving.” My bid was barely out of my mouth when to my shock and surprise, I heard the words “sold to number . . . 103.” I had done it. I had secured freshly pressed shirts in perpetuity. Surely, one of my children would inherit it. This would insure that my offspring would be sharp dress men that the world would go crazy over for generations to come.

I could not wait to show the lovely Miss Beverly this treasure. I must admit that I was a bit naïve. I thought that automatic meant that all you had to do was throw a shirt on top of the throat to the rollers, turn on the switch and it would pull them through pressing out the wrinkles as they passed between the massive, padded, steam-filled, rollers. Looking over my prize, figuring out how it would work, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of capacity. There was no hopper on top. With a hopper, the busy family could load it up turn on the switch and press an entire week’s worth of clothing hands free. After a bit of cogitation, I figured that twenty minutes with some cardboard, utility knife and some duct tape the capacity problems would be solved.

I was hopeful and dying to show the lovely Miss Beverly my revolutionary new find that I purchased for a dollar. This is where my naivety failed me. I was showing off the many advantages of our new automatic industrial steam iron, when Bev pointed out that you couldn’t just throw your shirts, pants, underwear, and socks on top and the wrinkles would automatically be pressed away. No you had to carefully fold your clothing and feed them through carefully or the wrinkles would be pressed into the fabric.

Carefully fold them and feed them through? Are you sure? It says automatic. Carefully fold them and feed them through? That would be like the automatic dishwasher that I have the scrap and rinse the dishes for in order for it to “wash” them. That is bogus. Bev assured me that it was bogus but true. I had spent a dollar to carefully fold and feed cloths into the “automatic” iron. This was a definite technological step backwards.

And this is where the fun began; where our different temperaments showed through. When that auctioneer said sold, I heard him say “we have entered into a covenant. You will pay me $1, and you will take this piece of crap home.” I said in my mind, “Yes, I will pay you $1 and I will take this fantastic automatic industrial sized steam roller iron and make my life better.” The lovely Miss Beverly entered into no such covenant. When the word sold flew out of the auctioneer’s mouth, she entered into an agreement to pay $1 and leave that piece of crap here if she wanted to.

You can see that the storm was coming. Two different world views were heading toward a collision course. Thankfully, life’s circumstances would force a solution. We were poor. Consequently, we were still driving an old 74 Camaro with little back seat room and no trunk room. Something would have to be left behind. We could take the chair and TV, or the TV and the iron, but not the chair and the iron. Something had to be voted off of the island. I knew that the TV and the chair would work. Bev’s logic managed to penetrate my delusions of hands free ironing. I could see the validity of her argument. I had wasted a dollar on a pipe dream. However, there was still the covenant. “You will take this piece of crap home.” After much huffing, puffing and muttering, the laws of physics proved themselves firm and unyielding. You cannot put 10.5 cubic feet of things into a 10.25 cubic foot space. It was a 45 minute drive home. So a covenant rescue trip to bring home the iron was a 90 minute fool’s errand.

So, we left it; sitting on the edge of a bean field a little worse for wear with a few scratches with the pushing and pulling of trying to have it all. It became a little story of our life together. Then in a moment of kindness and grace this week, Bev remembered it and thanked me for the memory of something I was willing to give up 27 years ago. It seems that old iron could press one more time; a memory on our hearts.

Take care,

Roger