While I was away one evening, Joyce and Nancy decided to do the laundry. Of course, neither of them had ever done laundry before except to help me do it. There was a very nice, new, washing machine in the basement of our apartment house. This house was an old multi-story that had been converted to apartments - three I think, with ours being the largest. The apartment came furnished. We had two bedrooms, living room, dining room (with a Chippendale dining room set) and kitchen. One bathroom - three girls.

This washing machine was one of the ones with the wringer on the side and needed rinse tubs to remove the suds after washing. Joyce and Nancy neglected the rinse tubs - but that really didn't matter, because they loaded everything that was soiled, including our navy blue sweat shirts, into one load, sheets and all, and turned on the machine. They went upstairs and began playing records and dancing - having a wonderful time, till they smelled the smoke! During some very heated questioning as in "How the hell long did you let this thing run?" I learned they had forgotten about the laundry - for two hours!

When I came home the smell was really something. They met me at the door - laughing and crying and yelling! I went to the basement and was met with quite a spectacle. The machine still looked pretty and white, but the motor was little more than a blob. They had burned out the motor. One of them had the sense to pull the electric plug - but the damage was done - our clothes, sheets and underwear were all blue. The washing machine was a total loss. There was nowhere to rinse or ability to wring the clothes that were still in the machine. The wringer was operated by the machine motor... so we had to rinse and wring everything by hand. It is very difficult to wring sweat shirts and sheets by hand. Especially with one angry and two hysterical wringers.

Of course, I, as "housemother" had to call the landlord and give her the bad news. We were very lucky little laundresses because we were not charged the $200 replacement for the washing machine. I just had to promise that I would do all the laundry in the future. Those two paid for that - because I made them do all the wringing!

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