Clothes washing habits fine as long as shades kept drawn

My favorite time of the year is now. What could be better than Christmas, New Year, the parades, bowl games, race for national collegiate football champion, pro finals and the Super Bowl?

On New Year's Day you can watch football from coast to coast, change time zones in the comfort of your home, eat junk food, drink beer, skip the calisthenics and pretend you're a Heisman Trophy finalist.

This time of the year often takes me back 40 years to a Dear Abby column I still remember to this day. The story takes place up North where basements are common. Since we lived in Columbia, Mo. when I was a graduate student at the university there and suffering from temporary insanity by leaving the comfort of my native Texas home, I remember the basement well.

It was cozy in the winter and all the water pipes, meters and electrical boxes were located there to protect them from below zero weather.

We also had our washing machine and a recreation room for our two boys.

It was big enough to ride a tricycle and pull a wagon, but my boys got tired of pulling me behind the tricycle so we mostly watched football while my wife did the washing and drying.

This washing and drying activity is quite common in basements throughout the frozen tundra of the North. The story in Dear Abby as I recall was about a woman who wrote in and confessed to Abby that she might be abnormal because she loved to do her washing and drying in the nude. Was she a pervert? Did she need psychiatric help?

Abby assured her that while it was unusual she saw nothing wrong with the practice as long as she kept her shades drawn and performed this ritual in the privacy of her own home.

You'd think that this would be the end of the story but the next few weeks brought responses from other women all over the country who were doing the same thing and were so relieved to find they were not bonkers.

Then one letter came from a reader who said she had done this for years but there could be unforeseen circumstances. It was the finals before the Super Bowl. She was washing and decided to just wash what she had on, everything she had on. Her hair was up in curlers and the pipes were sweating overhead, dripping on her hair. She spotted her son's football helmet hanging on a peg and eased it down over her curlers.

There she was in just flip flops and helmet when she heard a cough. She turned to see the meter reader easing out the basement door. When her eyes met his for that split second he said, "Lady, I don't know who you are playing for but I hope your team wins."

Doc Blakely is a humorist and motivational speaker who resides in Wharton.