The End of Ironing
by D.T. Harris

I meant it's going to be the end of irony, Charlie. For the last 30 years — just about the time that the Twin Towers had been up — we've been kind of dreaming in an age that doesn't take anything seriously. We were told that everything was a joke, that nothing was real, that everything was to be greeted with a giggle or a smirk. If I'm sure of one thing — that's not going to happen anymore. That's not to say that we're going to become a morose and funereal people. We're not. We never could be. But we're going to learn the distinction between what's funny and what's not, between a joke and a menace. And I think that this terrible, savage attack has done that.
— Roger Rosenblatt on "Charlie Rose" 09-19-2001

When it happened, Lula Mae said she was in the kitchen doing the "dishes and pans and whatnots, that had been a sittin' since dinner — because even a lump of enameled clay should have the opportunity to partake in the pleasures and joys of a little, evening soak in the tub."

When she told me this on the phone the other day, I have to admit I was immediately transported to the fragrant vestibule that Lula Mae and her twin sister, Victoriola Knox, call a kitchen. If you had to spend your life as a spoon, a plate, glass, pot or a pan, you could consider yourself inanimately lucky that you'd wound up shelved somewhere in that tiny space.

"So, anyway — I was doin' the dishes, with Charlie Rose on in the living room, but not turned up too loud 'cuz Uncle Jimminy was asleep in the foyer after comin' home falling-down drunk just before 11 — and the foyer bein' where he fell down, and the rule with Uncle Jimminy bein' 'where he lays is where he stays.'"

James Earl Knox was not a large man in stature, but he had managed to make up for that genetic discrepancy by becoming, over his 70-odd years, very large in temperament. I imagined the scene as Lula Mae continued to fill me in on what she liked to call "the importance of my week, so far."

"Anyway — I'm just in the middle of the waffle cake pan, and I'm scrapin' out the crumbs stuck down in those little, metal valleys, when I hear this male voice on the television: 'I meant it's going to be the end of ironing, Charlie'; and then a few words later, 'If I'm sure of one thing — that's not going to happen anymore.' Well, I'll tell you — you could have knocked me over with a coupon for a Brillo pad."

Lula Mae's collection of kitchen sink accessories was unsurpassed.

"So I yelled out to Victoriola, who was in the back bathroom puttin' on her nighttime face. 'Vic — you hear that?' And by the time I'd reached the living room, she came 'round the hallway corner lookin' like a trick-or-treater without her bag. 'What?' she says.

"'Victoriola,' I says, 'this fellow, here, with the lush, gray hair and sophisticated facial composition, just said that one result of the recent bombings in New York and Washington is that it will be the end of ironing in this country.' And she says, 'Oh, my word.'"

"Well, that would certainly be a new wrinkle," I responded, beginning to see where this was going.

"And then just a day or so later," she continued, the sound of the kitchen stool creaking in the background, "I saw this lady on the television sayin' that she wasn't too afraid about Afghanistan becoming a second Viet Nam. She said, 'Frankly, I'm more worried about another Alamo.' And that's when it hit me, Bobby."

"That's when what hit you, Lula Mae?" I asked, playing the role of the practiced and restrained straight man for all it isn't worth.

"That's when it dawned on me what that other fellow was sayin'. This 43rd president of the United States, democratically elected by not quite most of the voters, is plannin' to attack an enemy that embraces a kind of religious zealotry that's closer to that of his most zealous supporters than it is to your average fire-and-brimstone Catholic, Lutheran or Episcopalian, let alone to your average burn-in-the-fires-of-hell New Yorker. And this enemy — created, armed and trained by this country — could likely be shootin' down our helicopters and planes with missiles that say 'Proudly Made in the U.S.A.'"

She took a breath — for effect, I think, more than a need for oxygen.

"If we've put an end to ironing in this country, it's by making things so wrinkled they seem smooth."

"Lula Mae," I said, "some people might call you a menace."

E-mail D.T. Harris at calamostreet at aol dot com.