“CREATURE: 1: something created, as (a) a lower animal; (b) a human being; (c) a being of anomalous or certain aspect of nature.” — Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 

A very distraught friend recently lamented to me that her dishwasher was broken. Still under warranty, it would be weeks before the right part was available for the company to repair it — and she despised washing dishes by hand.

Being a compassionate friend, I lent her my shoulder to cry on, so to speak. But then it got me thinking about the electronic age we live in now, and the appliances we consider creature comforts that we can take for granted.

‘I got fired when I was a dishwasher at Denny’s. That set me back a little bit. You don’t realize how important dishwashers are until you do the job.’ — Kelsey Grammer 

The person we have to thank for the modern dishwasher is Josephine Cochran, a socialite who hated washing dishes so much that she invented her own. Her machine was the first to use water pressure instead of scrubbers to clean dishes, and she was granted a U.S. patent for her machine.

Her dishwasher became popular with the hospitality industry, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that dishwashers caught on with the public. Cochran never saw her machine sought after as a household appliance because she died in 1913. Cochran’s Crescent Washing Machine Co., was acquired in 1926 by KitchenAid, now part of Whirlpool.

You can come up with a varying list of dates as to when the first washing machine was invented. There are different inventors mentioned in the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s. Slowly, washing machines gained more electric functions until they became automatic in 1937.

Automatic washing machines have truly come a long way from the primitive methods of cleaning clothes on a stone by a stream, a scrub board in a wash tub or a wringer-type machine.

‘Difficult times in life are like washing machines; they twist us, spin us, and knock us around, but in the end, we come out cleaner, brighter and better than before.’ — author unknown 

Naturally, everyone wanted an automatic way to dry clothes, too — and along came the electric dryer.

We take dryers for granted, but not that long ago, when clothes needed drying, we took them outside to hang on the clothesline.

While their popularity grew in the 1950s, dryers didn’t really begin coming into their own until around 1960, even though in 1930 J. Ross Moore developed the first electric clothes dryer.

‘My happiest childhood memories are of times in our backyard. My mother had an old clothesline that hung out in front. It seemed like it stretched a mile long and I loved sitting in the sun while she hung clothes.’ — Traci Lords 

Myself, being well over the Medicare age requirement, I have first-hand knowledge of the way things “use-ta” get done. In fact, I still don’t have a dishwasher, just a pair of dish-watered hands.

My husband Harry and I, as a young married couple setting up housekeeping on our own in the late ’50s, had to do with what we could afford. We were very frugal, with no credit cards, and he insisted he be the lone bread-winner so I could be the stay-at-home mom when the children came along.

There were quite a few years before we could afford a lot of everyday luxuries other folks already took for granted, like indoor running water, plumbing, air conditioning and other modern household essentials.

So I am very familiar with the way of life my ancestors endured: pumping water by hand, a drafty outhouse, scrub boards in wash tubs, wringer-type washing machines, and a clothesline strung out in the backyard flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.

I’m not sorry or complaining that we chose to start our married life that way because it made us more appreciative of the finer things in life that came along gradually through the years.

It also gave our sons a little taste of life, to experience the hard times before the good times as they were growing up, learning you have to be patient and work for the things you want. It also gave them a stay-at-home mom to help with their homework, go squirrel hunting with them or head to the creek for a day of fishing. All in all, a win-win lifestyle.

‘When a husband says, ‘I run things in my home,’ he may mean the washing machine, the dishwasher and the vacuum cleaner.’ — Sam Ewing 

I think about our younger generations and wonder, in this electronic age of iPhones and laptops, would they want to live the lifestyle their grandparents knew? More than apt they wouldn’t, but we have smart and strong-minded young people surrounding us, so I’m sure they’d hunker down and take charge of the situation if they had to.

In fact, we do have some ingenious youth desiring to learn some tricks of the trade from their elders. My granddaughter Cheryl had me teach her how to can zucchini relish and make her own.

Just recently, teenager Miley King, feisty and smart as a whip, helped her Grandma can fresh peach preserves, sharing one of her own jars with me. But needless to say, they’re history now, gone by the way of hot buttered toast!

Sometimes, even we elderly have to hunker down and do the same thing, when someone we depended on is no longer with us to share our thoughts, everyday life and never-ending chores.

That’s when having sons really comes in handy, sharing the heavy load of routine homeowner necessities. When my hard-working sons are helping me out, the song made popular in 1950 by Dinah Shore, “It’s So Nice to Have a Man Around the House,” comes to mind.

For married couples, their spouse is a built-in creature comfort — and even though they may grumble and disagree on occasion, they don’t come with a lifetime warranty, so enjoy and support them while you have them.

Jean Tanner is a lifelong resident of rural Bluffton. She can be reached at jstmeema@hargray.com.

Credit: Original article published here.