One day in the mid to late 1950s Muriel came home from work and told us about an article she had read in a magazine. The essay had been about how to iron a man's shirt.
The author said that he had always wondered how the Chinese laundry where he took his shirts got them so well cleaned and pressed. Particularly he was interested in how they managed to iron a shirt with no creases or wrinkles. When he tried it at home it felt as if it was always a disaster. He went out of his way to discover the art of pressing an ordinary man's shirt.
The laundry where he had his shirts washed and starched and pressed had an employee standing close to the front window where the author could see him at work. Immediately he noticed that the ironing board was set up "wrong." As the laundryman stood by the board, the wider end of the board was to his left while the pointed smaller end was on his right. The first part of the shirt that he ironed was the collar. Then he went on to iron the yoke at the back of the shirt. Following the yoke, the man pressed the sleeves. When all of the smaller areas had been ironed, the laundry employee went on to iron the larger body of the shirt. The back of the shirt spread out across the wide portion of the board fit almost perfectly. The two sections of the front were just the right size. There was none of the struggling to pull the body of the shirt across the small pointed end of the board as the author usually did.
I think that from then on Muriel changed how she pressed Bob's shirts. I know that her story affected me although I must have been under ten years old. I still remember the story of the man who owned the Chinese laundry and how he ironed men's shirts.
I iron all of my husband's shirts following those rules. Not that they necessarily look perfect later, but it is a habit I would not alter. When I was in high school, I wore a uniform every day. The girls had to wear a shapeless gray skirt, a white blouse and a navy blue blazer. There were a lot of mornings when I pulled the shirt out of the laundry and zipped through it ironing only the cuffs, the collar and the front of the shirt. I always wore an Oxford shirt with a button down collar. And I always set up the board with the wide end on my left which for a right handed person is the business end.
Thanks Muriel and an unknown author for teaching me how to iron a shirt.
