Photo by Cheryl Andrews© (Click on the image for demo)
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On Wednesdays all over the internet bloggers post a photo with no words to explain it. The idea is the photo says so much it doesn’t need a description.
Other Wordless Wednesday Contributors:
Cheryl Andrews 
17 comments
27 July 2014 at 3:58 pm
Heart To Harp
Great juxtaposition of ideas, between “easy,” and the finger-eating rollers that were anything but. (We had one as well, and it scared me every laundry day.) The background has just enough light and shape to draw me in and make me wonder what other treasures you could find there.
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28 July 2014 at 10:36 am
Cheryl
I had a similar wringer washer to this. I was always afraid I’d catch a strand of my long hair or a finger tip so I started pushing items through with a wooden spatula!
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28 July 2014 at 1:08 pm
Heart To Harp
Very smart!!!!
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18 June 2014 at 9:55 pm
Wunderkamera
A mangle! Though I see most of you call it a wringer. Which reminds me of a friend of mine in France once emailing me that she was doing a translation from French to English and had mistakenly translated “essoreuse” as “extracter” when it should have been “spin dryer” and I responded that I would have translated it as “mangle”. Which shows how out of date my French is sometimes, or else how out of date my washing machine was in the days when I was washing in French (it did have a mangle). Anyway, loved the photo and the video!
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19 June 2014 at 8:25 pm
Cheryl
Thanks, Elizabeth! There were so many horror stories out there about fingers and limbs getting mangled, your translation works for me.
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18 June 2014 at 8:44 pm
Barbara Lambert
Golly Cheryl — I just (finally) played the video (didn’t see that before) and this IS the kind of machine we had, with plungers! (But no water heater!) Fascinating.
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19 June 2014 at 8:24 pm
Cheryl
Ours wasn’t exactly the same either, Barabara. But I remember loving the sound the bell-like plungers made, and the video brought that back … that distinctive sound was a pleasant surprise.
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18 June 2014 at 3:54 pm
pearlsandprose
Oh Cheryl, this one gave me chills. My grandmother had one in her basement and she often told me about the little girl whose hand was mangled because she was too curious. Have been afraid of them ever since. 🙂 Great photo, though!
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19 June 2014 at 8:20 pm
Cheryl
Shivers for sure, Carole. I was terrified of the wringer too, always afraid to feed the wash items through because I thought it would grab my fingers. Due to a similar story to yours about a woman who’s forearm was crushed.
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18 June 2014 at 12:24 pm
Lucid Gypsy
When I was a child my grandmother had a wringer – except it was called a mangle and was freestanding and kept outside. The copper in the video ws a bit like the copper in her kitchen a grey metal thing on legs. It was used to heat water for baths, to boil sheets and some other bits of laundry. I don’t know how it got rinsed but I loved turning the handle on the mangle ! Thanks for the memories 🙂
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18 June 2014 at 2:18 pm
Cheryl
Our wringer washer was in the summer kitchen. It was electric, but we had to heat the water for it by the pail on top of the Quebec heater (coal stove).
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18 June 2014 at 9:17 am
Barbara Lambert
EASY DOES IT! My goodness. (A) what a great shot, and (B) I confess it brings back memories of my (our) very first washing machine, two babies and a wringer-washer, and the just-out-of- student life … and those wringers were, indeed, a hell of a lot easier than wringing the stuff out by hand after soaking them in the kitchen sink. Not only that, but “my” wringers looked suspiciously like these; could my old washer have ended up in whatever treasure-trove of ancient history you were exploring when you took this picture, I wonder. We lived in Ottawa at the time. I wish I’d had a camera then, because the actual washing mechanism was remarkable. It had bell-like plungers that went up and down, rather than the back-and-forth swirly kind of washer-thing…! My husband felt very proud when he brought this home, though I’ve totally forgotten how he did that, as we had a VW beetle. Golly, what memories this shot has “provoked”.
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18 June 2014 at 11:57 am
Cheryl
This unit was quite dismantled, but if you click on the photo, Barabara, it will take you to a video clip Iincluded that, YES, shows those magnificent bell-like plunger thingies in action! I have no idea how your husband could ever have gotten this home in a VW Beetle! Even without all it’s parts it took up a lot of floor space in that old barn.
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18 June 2014 at 8:30 am
Mary
You bring it all back with this one, Cheryl. The dull grey cement washtubs under the tiny basement window; everything dank and dark, spider webs, the monster wringer that mum said would eat my fingers if I touched it.
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18 June 2014 at 11:53 am
Cheryl
I was terrified of those ‘monster’ wringers too, Mary.
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18 June 2014 at 7:52 am
carin
We had an easy washing machine! Not copper though. But, yes, I can still feel the way the water gushed out as the sheets and shirts and towels went into the wringer, and how stiffly they came out the other side. The flapping to remove wrinkles before hanging on sunny, breezy line. Laundry is a lost art. I have a circular line now. And a front loader. Not as ‘easy’ as before, but not complaining either. Lovely shot, Cheryl… nice memory jog.
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18 June 2014 at 11:52 am
Cheryl
The best part of this memory for me, Carin, was the sound of the ‘thingy’ smashing the clothes around in the soapy copper tub … it’s why I shared the video clip.
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