22 December 2022
Sometime around the beginning of this month, I was taking a shower and while drying off, I heard a rip. That towel has a great pile warp which means it dries you really well (think little tiny loops of thread). However, there are two horizontal bands, one on either end, where there is little or no warp. That’s where it tore. It got me to thinking when was the last time I bought towels for the house?
I generally purchase linens and towels from L.L. Bean. I like the quality of the materials and they hold up over time. It also doesn’t hurt that L.L. Bean has a liberal return policy (often abused by customers). I searched my purchase history on the site which only goes back to 2014, so my towels, hand cloths, and bath cloths have to be older than 8 years. I guess, with all the washings over those 8 plus years, they decided to give up the ghost.
I shopped the L.L. Bean website to find something similar to what I currently have (after all, they lasted a very long time) but didn’t find anything similar. I have to admit, the company makes online shopping very easy. When you type in “towels” in the search, you get the entire set – towels, hand towels, bath cloths and bath mats. You can purchase the items individually or as sets.
The price is fairly steep but I figured if the new ones last as long as the old ones, it’s a good investment. Now comes the big question – the color. I don’t remember the actual color of the old towels but it probably was something like sea green, antique pine, etc. Who knows? Color is not my strong suit. I called them green. They seemed to work well with my 1950’s bathroom of gray tile with pink trim tiles. and pink bath tub.
This time, I opted for “Silver Moon” thinking it would go great with the gray tile. The order was 4 towels, 4 hand towels, 6 bath cloths and 2 bath mats. A little over $400 later and the order was processed, shipped, and on its way.
When they arrived, I immediately washed and dried everything and realized “Silver Moon” didn’t looks as great as I thought it would. It certainly blends in with the gray tile but I think I need more color contrast. Oh well, these towels will probably have to last another 8 plus years.
The whole point of this post is the bath cloths. The pile warp on these new ones are nowhere near that of my old ones. That doesn’t mean they don’t dry well, just there’s not much warp.
Compare that to the pile warp of the old bath cloth.
The first time I used the new bath cloths I was taken back in time to my Grandmother Ruby’s house. It was a two bedroom, one bathroom type of house with a linen closet just inside the bathroom door. I think my brother Archie, me, and my cousins Jimmie, Jean and Jo all used to climb up into the closet on the built in shelves. The shelving was impressively sturdy and we made a mess of the linens and towels while “hiding out” from my parents and grandparents. By my description, you can probably tell we were pretty small when we played in the linen closet.
Ruby had a simple tub and anytime we had to take a bath, we simply went into the linen closet, pulled down a towel and bath cloth (we called them bath rags), stoppered and filled the tub and crawled in. Most of the time, Archie and I had to bathe together. It was those bath cloths and bath towels that sent me down memory lane. The new ones are like all the old cloths and towels at my grandmother’s.
Back in the 50’s plush linen was not in the vocabulary. We didn’t know anything about thread count on sheets nor pile warp on towels. Ruby had a washer but all clothes were dried on the line outside (or in the case of inclement weather on a clothes rack set over the floor furnace. There’s nothing like sheets and towels and bath cloths dried in the open air on a clothes line.
They have that stiff, crisp feel to them (and back before pollution got so bad – the smell of fresh air). They were stiff enough they could actually scratch you dry. The size, weight, warp and feel of the new bath cloths were, to me, exactly those of my childhood.
By the way, when I bought my house in 1995 in Fort Lauderdale, there was a clothes line in the back yard. I tried once to dry my clothes on the line and gave it up when I realized the amount of pollution in our area (I’m close to the Fort Lauderdale airport and we get a tremendous amount of particulates from jets taking off and landing). The sheets actually dried a dingy gray.
I distinctly remember on one bath night where Ruby was overseeing me and Archie in the tub. Archie, ever the devil, suggested I needed to soap the tip of my penis to get it clean. I didn’t like the idea and protested but he could be very persuasive. I did. There was an immediate burning at the opening to my urethra. It continued to burn, I continued to cry, and Ruby continued to tsk, tsk and say isn’t Archie terrible and Archie continued to laugh. I, to this day, have no idea if Ruby knew what would happen or just wanted to see what would happen. Archie continued laughing his ass off at my predicament. I probably exaggerate but it seems to me the burning didn’t stop for a couple of hours. Some of life’s most valuable lessons are learned from asshole brothers. My only question is how he knew what would happen. I can only hope he made the discovery on his own and suffered the same fate as I.
Bathing together was not unusual. I’m not sure when Archie and I stopped having a bath together. Oh, and you always saved the bath water. Often times, mother or dad would draw a bath, finish bathing, leave the water in the tub, and then send us in to get clean. Since I was the youngest, sometimes I was the fourth person in the bath water. Bathing after mom or dad was OK but the water got a little less clear after Archie bathed.
When I went to spend some time with my Aunt Sue and Uncle Jack (Sue was my dad’s sister) I was shocked when she ran the bath for me and only put about 2 inches of water in the tub. I couldn’t figure that out since at home we filled the tub half way up the sides. Later, I learned that their well was going dry and they had to strictly conserve water. This continued until they finally got city water from the town of Morton. I have no idea when or where I experience my first shower but it was probably at summer camp in the Boy Scouts.
I’ve written about this before but it’s interesting how your senses can send you back to your childhood or specific events in your life -the feel of that new bath cloth against my skin, the smell of newly mowed grass in the summer in Mississippi, the sounds of whip-poor-wills at evening, or the taste of my mother’s home made lemon ice-box pie or the tactile sensation of petting a Persian cat.
It’s often said that blind people don’t have better hearing than any other person but they simply rely on their hearing more than sighted people. As a child, I think my senses were on high alert. My dad told me not long before he died that his sense of taste and smell were gone. He was already losing his eyesight and his hearing. I can now relate. I hated hot peppers as a kid and now I crave them. Anything to boost the taste buds. My hearing and sight are going and food doesn’t taste the same. My sense of smell seems undiminished and the tactile sense of that wash cloth made my day. I think I’ll keep the new bath order.
By the way, I’m keeping the old bath towels/cloths. I learned as a kid you never throw anything away. The years of the Great Depression still live on in my family.
