Greetings! This is going to be Wash Week here at Old Picture of the Day, and we start with this picture from 1937. I find the picture fascinating. It shows the camp of a homeless family set off by the side of the highway. The family has lost everything, and it has come down to them living in a tent by the side of the road. The thing that is amazing is that with all this, you can see the woman washing clothes. The family has lost all, but they will have clean clothes, thanks to this dedicated mom.

I have become convinced that 90% of all the washing that has ever been done, has been done by women. I am not saying that it should have been that way, and I am not saying that washing is “women’s work”. I am simply saying if you tallied up all the washing that was ever done, you would find that it was done by women. Of the maybe 10% of the washing that has been done by men, that washing was likely done under the influence of women. I would explain it this way. Imagine a bachelor with 14 pairs of socks. He would wear one pair each day. At the end of the day, he would throw the used socks in a pile on the floor. At the end of 14 days he is out of clean socks. His natural instinct would be to make one more round through socks, and start re-wearing the once-worn socks in the pile. It is likely that most bachelors would in the end decide to wear the socks one more time. But, some bachelors would realize that they might run into a woman they! liked that would be offended that they were re-wearing already once-worn socks. Based on the concern of offending a woman said bachelor might like, he probably would decide to go out and buy some new socks. If he did not have the extra money for new socks, he would probably first try to see if he could invite his mother over for dinner, in the hopes she would wash his socks while there. If that fails, he is out of options, and he might actually wash the socks. In this case, we have a man washing, but it is under the influence of women, in that he is concerned of how a woman might react to him wearing dirty socks.


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