ODDS ‘N’ SODS — Cream of long johns

Some of the things that happened to me over the years, at mines and exploration camps, are always good for a laugh. Although I forget most of these episodes, I still remember a few.

One day, while working at Giant Yellowknife Mines in the Northwest Territories in the winter of 1950, I decided to wash my Stanfield long johns. They had been white when new, but now, with ample supply of arseno pyrite and other mineral dust weighing them down, I thought it time to give them a rinse. Our big bunkhouse had a large tub in the shower room for washing clothes.

Joe Sabastion, a fellow miner, was in the washroom at the time. I asked him which was the best soap with which to wash my underwear. There were some cans of lye sitting about, so Joe said: “I would put in some lye if I were you.” Deciding this was good advice, I dumped a half a can on to my long johns, stirred in some water with a short pole and retired to my room to await results.

Sometime later, I returned to see how the lye was working. To my amazement, when I started stirring what had been my underwear, I found I was stirring a mixture that was exactly like Cream of Wheat porridge. I guess the buttons were still in the tub someplace, but my long johns were mush. Unfortunately, Joe hadn’t told me just how much lye to add. I can still hear him laughing when I told him the results of my laundry endeavor. I had more trouble with laundry on another occasion, in the early 1960s, while working at a camp in the Highland Valley area of British Columbia. I had heard about launderettes in cities and, considering that I had a great bag of dirty clothes at camp, decided to head into Kamloops to investigate one of these newfangled, automatic contraptions. When I arrived, there was just one person present — a woman who gave this sightly bushed prospector much good advice on how to operate the machine.

I pressed all the buttons and sat down to await the wonders of modern technology. After some time, the machine stopped and I peered into it. “My God,” I exclaimed. “My laundry is gone — I was sitting right here, so nobody could have stolen it!”

Well, this information made her day. “Oh no,” she said, roaring with laughter. “It’s not gone, it’s sticking to the sides of the washer, underneath the ring at the top.” And sure enough, there it was. — Andy Horne, a regular contributor to the column, resides in Sorrento, B.C.