When I was a wee slip of a girl, I hired myself out to several women who lived nearby and helped them clean their house and iron laundry. Back then, most everything got ironed, including sheets and pillowcases, underwear and handkerchiefs (of the cotton variety) and not with spray starch either. With that stuff you mixed in water and soaked the clothes in it, sometimes letting them sit in the refrigerator in bowls waiting to absorb enough starch to iron without leaving white streaks everywhere.
Some Saturdays I stood at the ironing board for hours, stretching the wrinkles out of someone else's things. I didn't mind the handkerchiefs so much because they were small and square. You could tell the husband's sturdy white handkerchiefs right off. Sometimes they had a ribbon of cranberry cloth around the edge, or a navy plaid. But mostly they were white no frill basic cloths, very utilitarian.
The wife's were frilly and edged with lace and often sported an embroidered bouquet of flowers of some sort in one corner. Sometimes they were a dainty pink or yellow color, very feminine. And not too practical for blowing your nose on. Maybe more for absorbing any moistness from your palms if you were nervous, or for plain old show.
After all, in those days, a lady never left home without a purse containing at least a dime to call home if you got in trouble or needed to use the ladies room and it was a pay toilet, and a handkerchief to help maintain that pristine look.
But God help you if you had a cold and used those darn cotton handkerchiefs to blow your nose on! Ouch! If your nose wasn't sore before, it would be after a couple of swipes. Especially if you used starch when you ironed it. Who wants a snoot full of rough scratchy starch? Not to mention carrying around all those germs. Yuck.
Today while my nose was running and I had to continually wipe and blow, I was thanking the good Lord over and over that I have plenty of boxes of soft Kleenex - Puffs to be exact - around the house. I know what it is to be caught at work where you only have toilet paper to use. Your poor little nose gets rubbed raw.
And there have been times when I couldn't afford to buy Puffs and had to make do with the generic brands that are none too gentle. Today I am in good shape, and I know how lucky I am that I don't have to deal with a sore nose on top of head congestion and a sore throat. I am so grateful for Puffs. What a wonderful thing.
Now if they could just invent something to prevent you from getting a cold in the first place!
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