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    Texas | Columns | "True Confessions and Mild Obsessions"

    Blind Drunk in Beaumont

    by Frances Giles
    My mother was always a hard worker who, in addition to working as an office nurse 5 1/2 days a week for years, also kept a pretty clean, if cluttered, house. She had 2 kids to thank for the cluttered part and never made a big to-do about it, though. Once in awhile she would hire a lady to come help her with the heavier jobs, one of which was taking down all of the heavy wooden venetian blinds and giving them a good cleaning. That consisted of dumping each one in the bathtub filled with hot soapy water with a good sized shot of Clorox mixed in, then lifting them up and down in the water to get at the dust and grime in between the slats. After that they were carried into the back yard to hose off all the soapy residue, and then they were allowed to air dry before being rehung (and sometimes restrung if the cords and flat cotton tapes had become twisted). In the dry state they were pretty heavy, but when they were waterlogged, it sometimes called for a two person carry, especially as they neared the end of, I believe, 9 or maybe 10 blinds.
    Clorox Bottle and Blinds
    TE photo

    Mama had remarried and my stepfather, who was a native of Hope, Arkansas had taken her, my brother Butch and me to meet his mother and the siblings who still lived in the area, and they had presented him with a kind of joke present, a gallon sized, glass jug of White Lightning, aka moonshine whiskey. It got stuck under the kitchen sink when we got back to Beaumont and forgotten, for the most part, except for a couple of occasions when Bill brought it out to show friends how “pure” the stuff was and demonstrated this by lighting a tablespoon full to show off the pretty blue flame. It made for a neat little party trick, I guess.

    Fast forward to cleaning day. I was dusting and being nagged by Mama not to wipe the lamps and glassware with the same cloth I soaked with Old English furniture polish. Sheesh, one little old mistake can haunt a person for years. Anyway, the lady whom she had hired to help her, Mrs. Sarah Thomas, was working on the blinds in the bathroom and I heard Mama start coughing in the kitchen and saying “What's that smell!” The next thing I heard was their raucous laughter so I went to investigate. Yep, Mrs. Sarah had mistaken the jug of hooch for the jug of bleach and had been liberal, to say the least, in sloshing it into the hot soapy bath. The fumes traveled fast and it was heady, really heady, when those eye burning vapors filled the hall and at least 3 rooms. It wasn't exactly bathtub gin but it packed the same punch.


    © Frances Giles
    "True Confessions and Mild Obsessions" August 17 , 2012 Column
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