From a Laundry Room to Aristotle Onassis

I love my laundry room. If you had once done your laundry in a dark basement AND had fallen down the steep stairs, head first, ribs taking the brunt of each step, you would love my laundry room too.

When we moved to Valley View and 14 years later added on a new kitchen, we also added on this laundry room, with a splurge of a 15-pane red door, black and white checkerboard floor as in the kitchen, a floor to ceiling window looking out over the creek.

It was if I'd gone to Laundry Room Heaven.

There is a deep sink to bathe the dogs and the washer and dryer on one side.

Dirty laundry and dirty dogs get taken care of on that side of the room but let's go through the red door and see what is on the other side.

On top of the flat water heater is the snack area with an old Lance jar where the kids used to find after school snacks.

On a recycled cabinet from our old kitchen are appliances that I don't want cluttering up my kitchen: microwave, toaster, and an ancient food processor. There's a wall cabinet to hide all the family meds--human, canine, and feline. For who wants to see prescription bottles lined up on a kitchen counter? Shades of my grandparents, for Pete's sake!

An old cardboard Coca Cola Santa Claus stays out year round.

Above the microwave Minnie and Mickey Mouse are always ready to cheer me up on a gloomy laundry day.

There is a precious heirloom on one wall that means a lot to me, an old wood rolling pin, with a cute vintage towel hung over it.

What makes this rolling pin a treasure is that my grandmother used it for many years, and it was carved for her by my grandfather.

The rolling pin is made from white ash that baseball bats were made of in the early 1900s. As you can see, this rolling pin finally split and perhaps the bats did too.

Grandpa was a carpenter as well as a farmer and in World War II he built Liberty ships for our country. He wasn't a young man anymore, but four of his five sons were serving in the war and he wanted to do his part too. These cargo ships were turned out pretty quickly and many had problems. Over two thousand Liberty ships survived the war though, and I found out online that Greek and Italian shipping firms bought many of them.

Aristotle Onassis actually started his fleet from the old Liberty ships. So Grandpa may have had a small part in Mr. Onassis' becoming one of the world's richest men. I like to speculate that he could have even had a teeny part in Aristotle Onassis landing the widow of an American president.

Think of that!

I could't resist imagining a possible degree of separation between that famous horsewoman and my Grandpa. And with myself? Why not? I was never a horsewoman but like most young girls I loved horses. Here I am with Grandpa at the farm, a long time ago.

R.H. penciled in on my rough draft for this post--"a long, long, long time ago." He might be doing his own laundry tomorrow.