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In small German communities (such as are found in southwest North Dakota) a woman's character and social status are determined largely by the cleanliness of her home. When I was growing up my Aunt Mabel's home was the standard by which women defined the word "orderly." The U.S. Marine Corps once hired my Aunt Mabel as a consultant to train their drill instructors on barracks cleaning. She was failing too many of their best instructors and they had to let her go after her first week as an instructor.
Every spring, the "cleaning mood" overtakes Mabel. A glint comes into her eye and she begins to race about her house with arm loads of boxes, clothes hangars and cleaning supplies. Every closet is emptied of its contents. Every drawer and trunk is dumped out, sorted, categorized and repacked. Some things are disposed of and the rest finds a new home in a newly designated location. Heaven help the man, woman or child who blunders into her path while she wages war with dirt and messiness. Aunt Mabel's idea of a vacation is to visit someone and help them to clean house.
Aunt Mabel never did get much gratification from cleaning her own spotless home. I'll never forget the time when she finished cleaning her house from the top of the chimney to the corners under the basement stairs. It only took her about two hours to cover the whole house, but she had only started to get up her momentum. She was like a tractor stuck in the mud. Diesel smoke was pouring out of the stacks, the wheels were spinning but she wasn't getting anywhere. She was running up and down the stairs looking for something to clean. My father took pity on her and said, "We could use some help cleaning out the tool shed." Mabel's countenance rose like that of a shipwrecked seaman who has just caught sight of a sailing vessel headed his way. With gratefulness in her heart she went with us to "the farm." Living in town, we went to "the farm" almost every day in the summer. I didn't need a summer job growing up. My father farmed, so that meant I worked "on the farm". On the way out, Aunt Mabel rearranged the glove compartment in the pickup.
Our tool shed hadn't been cleaned out in many years. Boxes of bolts, nuts and spare parts were stacked against the wall and scattered across the floor during last season's harvest rush. Tools and drive belts intermingled with cans of paint kicked into corners and stacked helter skelter wherever they might fit. It was impossible to walk across the floor without stepping on something. Thirty seconds after Dad stopped the pickup there were boxes, belts, bottles and bolts flying out of the door of the tool shed amid a cloud of dust. By the end of the day the shed was neat as a pin and Mabel had lost any desire to clean even the smallest silverware drawer.
Dad and I were real satisfied with the new look of the shed until the day we needed a bearing for the combine. A search party was sent into the shed, but the bearing was not to be found. Finally Dad drove to town to buy a new one and we lost two hours of combining. My father asked Mabel about it that evening.
"Bearing? What does it look like?" My father drew a picture. "Oh sure," she said. "Those are in a box on the top shelf against the west wall." Sure enough, we found the elusive bearing the next day. It and the rest of its family were residing in a box labeled "round things." In the same box was an assortment of bushings, sockets, pieces of pipe and anything else fitting the description of "round thing." We looked more closely at the other boxes lining the shelves and found neat lettering announcing the presence of the likes of "long pointy things," "flat square things" and "big fat nails with holes in one end."
In order for a farmer to realize the full benefit of his tool shed it is important to be able to find the things that he knows are in there somewhere. Ordinarily, we like to keep all of the spare parts for each combine, tractor or implement in one place to make it easier to find what we need when we need it. After Aunt Mabel got done "helping" us we couldn't lay our hands on an alternator pulley for the tractor to save our lives. One day I accidentally found one at the bottom of the box of "round things."
"Aunt Mabel" I said that night in exasperation. "We can't find parts anymore when we look for them!"
"Cleanliness is next to godliness," was her sanctimonious reply.
"We won't need that alternator pulley in heaven," I said.
"You can walk in that shed now and you couldn't before," she snapped. "Land sakes boy! What kind of ungrateful talk is this anyway? You probably couldn't have found a bearing before I ever cleaned out your shed so why are you complaining to me about it now?" Aunt Mabel went on like that for quite awhile. At that point there was really no reason to continue the conversation. I had grievously insulted her by implying that her hard work was less than helpful.
Dad and I had to empty all the boxes onto the floor and re-sort the pile. We were halfway
through the job before the day ended and we had to go home. Some of the half full boxes were
shoved against the walls and piles of stuff were left scattered across the floor. The place ended up
looking even worse than before because we couldn't find the time to finish the job. I don't
suppose that Aunt Mabel could have been persuaded to clean our shed again and we wouldn't
have really wanted her to help us anyway. As long as we didn't have to live in there and nobody
else had to see it, I guess that the mess didn't really matter. Despite the disorganized appearance
we could find things after that because everything was out in the open, where we could see it.
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