Heads Up

It was a simpler time during my formative years back in the early 60's. Our washing machine was a big metal tub designed to hold the water and clothes. A hand crank on the side served to turn the agitator and clean the clothes. Two wooden rollers mounted above the tub acted as wringer to squeeze out most of the water before putting the clothes out on the clothes line strung across the back porch.

A friend of mine recently told me that his brother's arm went through one of those wringers. Ah, the silly pranks brothers play on one another. While it was a simpler time it was also a time when cuts, scrapes, bruises and a broken bone here and there were commonplace.

The place was Boston, Massachusetts. I must have been eight or nine years old at the time. My aunt and uncle were about to move to Texas, a place I only knew as a far away land. My parents were preparing to host a going away party for them at our house.