Harmon’s Histories: Beware Spring Fever, lest it inspire cleaning!

By Jim Harmon

It’s Spring! It’s finally arrived! I have the fever!

These are the days when one should feel as lighthearted as a Shakespearean quote: “The cuckoo-buds of yellow hue do paint the meadows with delight.”

Yeah, right.

On Thursday, the snow arrived. Big, heavy, wet snowflakes, refusing to melt on the lawn. At once they have extinguished my fever and annihilated my hopes. False spring.

I, of course, reacted in my usual, very genteel, refined and manly way, by whimpering with woe, assuming the fetal position, and refusing to come out from under the covers.

But then I remembered one of my old newspaper clippings from the late 19th century, and shot out of bed with great fear and trepidation. I must leave the house immediately!

Dateline: Missoula. Date: Sunday, May 17, 1896. The headline read: “HOUSE CLEANING DAY; A Missoula Citizen Goes Home and Finds Things Topsy Turvy.”

“As John Henry Grimes was nearing home yesterday at noon he heard a crash followed by a shriek proceeding from his quiet home.”

“Rushing into the hall he met a sight which almost paralyzed him. Lying at the foot of the stairs with a roll of carpet across her back pinning her tightly to the floor, lay his wife. The remains of a wash tub hung around her neck, the frame of a French plate glass mirror encircled her feet. In one hand she grasped a broom, in the other a mop.”

“As he was removing the tub from around her neck the baby took a tumble, bumping its head, before it splashed into the soap suds. He made a grab for the baby and just as he got it the family dog entered through the open door and made a grab for Mr. Grimes.”

“She called off the dog, grabbed the baby, and gave her husband a severe look of reproach.” Mr. Grimes then uttered three words that he instantly regretted. "You're a sight," he said.

“Mrs. Grimes immediately grew hysterical” and let him have it with a verbal fusillade. She screamed that “If she had known he was going to abuse her in that way she never would have married him. Never! Never! Never! and she was sorry she did, and wished that she was dead and the baby, too, who had a brute for a father."

But she wasn’t done. "You knew that I was going to clean house today. Yet you went up town when you might have stayed at home and helped, though a man is always in the way and …”

"Emmeline," said Mr. Grimes, “who felt more and more and more as if he would like to take the law into his own hands.”

"Don't Emmeline me,” she retorted. “I was carrying that heavy tub of suds up the steps when I slipped and fell and rolled clear to the bottom, grabbing everything I could to break my fall -Look at that mirror, Henry Grimes. Just look at that glass. What do you mean by coming home and running your foot through a $40 glass?”

“You've got lots of money to spend if you can indulge in such insane freaks. I never heard of such a thing in all my born days. Look at that mirror! U-o-o-o- you wretch, how I’d like to scratch you!”

"And bite me, too, Mrs. Grimes, I suppose,” he responded. “If ever I saw a fit subject for a lunatic asylum you are one." Grimes then started for the dining room.

"Where are you going Henry Grimes. Don't you dare track up that floor with your big feet,” she shouted.

"Damn the floor!” said Mr. Grimes, “as he wheeled and made a bee line for the door, grabbing a bed slat with which he belted the dog that was looking hungry eyed and expectant in the door.”

"You've killed the poor brute, you murderer" shrieked Mrs. Grimes. The baby set up another howling, and Mrs. Grimes said something else which John Henry didn't catch, and if he did, paid no attention to it.”

“He kept on up town, so hot under the collar that he had to lift his bat in order to allow the smoke to escape, firmly resolved that he would stay away from home until house cleaning was over.”

That caused me to do some ruminating. My dear, lovely wife is a bit of a clean freak. Perhaps it might be more advisable for me to desert the fetal position, come out from under the covers, and hide in my shop out in the garage. Yes – a much better choice, until the sun comes out.