By Phil Roberts
Olympic records are falling every day… I’m reminded, more than 50 years after becoming “State Champion,” of the time I finally decided to claim credit for the distinction.
We were having dinner and a program at the Sheridan Inn, the first night on the road for some 40 tour attendees on our biennial “History of Wyoming” tour. My fellow tour organizer, the late Barbara Barnes, came up with an “ice-breaker” in order for us to become better acquainted and to know everyone better. She asked each of us to write on a slip of paper something the others might never guess had happened to us, etc. The winner was a) who could align the mystery clue with the correct writer, or b) who’s clue would stump the entire group. My “Idaho State Sheet-throwing championship” (be careful how you enunciate the phrase!) leapt to mind.
The distinction goes back to 1968. Brother Steve and I had summer jobs—working in a Twin Falls, Idaho, laundry. I was one-sixth of a team—Manny dragged the sheets out of the gigantic washers into a very large canvas-covered moveable cart. He would then wheel it out to Steve and me and we’d lean over, unsnarl each sheet and toss it on a vibrating table, where Juanita and America would each grab an end and feed the sheet through a red-hot rotating mangle—a series of drums that would both flatten and dry each sheet as it was passed through the rollers. At the far end, Gina and Marta (usually) would fold each sheet before it cooled and set it on a conveyer to the “boxer.”
The noise was deafening anywhere you stood so it didn’t matter that no one but Steve and me (and supervisor Esther) spoke any English. We got along fine with hand signals and, over time, the few words in Spanish that I could make out over the din when we sat inside a “break room” for our 20-minute lunches. The temperature in the break room was about an even 100 degrees—a relatively cool respite from the temperature on the work floor of about 120-125 degrees!
One day, in the middle of June, Steve announced he got a better job, loading 60-90 lb. sacks of beans onto railroad cars, mostly by hand, at Harney Seed Co. We only had one day before Steve left and, of course, it was more hot than normal
Esther also sensed our “productivity” was declining so she ssid it was time to set the mark. With Steve gone the next day, .it would be our last shot at the title. If we could go full-throttle for four hours and break the existing state record for sheet-washing, throwing, ironing, and boxing, Esther would treat us to ice cream at the end of the next shift.
“Let’s do it!” I shouted and all made the universal signal for “full speed ahead.”.
To set the top mark we all knew it had to work at top speed, knowing that to set the record, everything would have to go perfectly. At 8 a.m., we’d been “warming up” since 6, when Esther clicked her stop watch and we were off!
Manny had the washers humming and the canvas carts were lining up as Steve and I did our parts and untangled each sheet for the mangle. The second the machine pulled it to Juanita and America, in it went into the irons. The sheets were still hot to the touch when Gina and Marta loaded them into the boxes. Esther put chalk marks on the big chalk board parallel to the mangles and we could see at a glance we were nearing the all-time record! (In the mists of time, I’ve forgotten the numbers).
Just as all of us were near collapse from the heat and fast work, Esther blew the whistle. Time was up and we’d done it—a record that gained us ice cream, a thin hand-drawn certificate (that I haven’t found so far), and a line that I’ve failed to include on my c.v., as “Idaho State Sheet-throwing champion” of all time. I haven’t checked but I’d bet our mark still tops all others! And, 50 years later, it won me the prize for the “History of Wyoming” tour’s icebreaker.
(After Steve left, me and the others thought about making another run for the record, but this time, our try was broken up quite suddenly in Hour 3 by a visit from two immigration inspectors. Everyone but me seemed to vanish into undocumented air. The government men asked me, the only person left on the floor that time, if I had “any help” with all of the equipment. The one-armed laundry owner, Mr. P–, standing behind the inspectors, who had been frantically blowing a whistle just minutes before the unannounced raid, signaled to me to nod enthusiastically that “yes” I was the only worker there. I guess that’s why I was making 25 cents an hour while the others made barely 15 cents…)
Later, in 1968, I helped in a futile try to organize unskilled workers into a union—doomed from the start in “right-to-work” Idaho, but that’s a story for another time.