Military "Ties", Jackets and Pants

Mom recalls when she was a teenager growing up on the Reinhardt home stead that her Mom, Sarah, took in laundry for the military to make ends meet. The army compound was located across the way, where the Hawaiian Homestead land is situated.  Mom said she was impressed by all those military vehicles lined up all in a row by barbed wired fence surrounding the compound.

Grandma would charge 10 cents for a handkerchief and 50 cents each for either a jacket or pants.  They would wash the clothes by hand, and starch them (in those days, no such thing as spray starch).  They had to "cook" the starch with water, until it became a thickened gooey paste, not to stiff but not too soft either, the military wanted it so-so.  I remember growing up making starch this same way too!  We starched our crinolines that we would wear under our "frou-frou" dresses that would make the dresses fluff out at least two or three feet, I swear!

Anyway, Mom says she helped her mom, as her older sisters either had jobs, married and gone out of the main home. She remembers the iron had a base where you filled it with charcoal to heat it up then she would iron the uniforms until the wee hours of the night, sometimes past one or two in the morning, just to get them ready.

She recalls seeing that iron not too many years ago at "somebody's house, somewhere", but she doesn't know what happened to that charcoal iron....it would be a collectors item today!