Get the Iron and the Niagara Spray Starch-It's National White Shirt Day

Smitty wasn’t very tall, but he had arms like Popeye. My mother would call him “wiry.” He had big blue eyes like a doll, and his blond hair was Brylcreem-ed up the sides over his ears, and combed into a Kewpie doll curly cue that hung on his forehead ala James Dean. He was an older man at 15 to my 13, and one of my sister’s friends. That summer in 1963, he gave me a friendship ring and I wore it on a chain around my neck because the ring was too big for my finger.

Somehow after a swimming pool outing, I ended up with one of Smitty’s short-sleeved, white cotton, button down shirts. I was thrilled to have such a personal possession of Smitty’s in my embrace. I wanted it to look perfect when I returned it to him. My mom tossed it in the washer with our family’s whites and hung it on the line to dry. It was up to me and my sister, however, to do the ironing for our family. Remember, it’s 1963. In my home, we’d never seen anything called “permanent press” yet, so we ironed everything cotton with the good old hot iron.

When I was small, we had a huge machine that ate our sheets, pillow cases, and my dad’s cotton duck pants. It was a mangle, and Stephen King made it famous in the 1970’s as it mangled humans between its hot press rollers. We didn’t have a steam iron, so we “sprinkled” our clothes, and they sat in a zip-sealed plastic bag until ironing day. The can of Niagara spray starch was also an integral part of the process. 

It was with love and devotion that I extracted Smitty’s shirt from the ironing bag. It was crinkled and damp from sitting in the bag. As I touched the hot iron to the garment, a puff of steam pushed ahead of vehicle’s path. Cotton fabric presses so beautifully, and I took great pride in smoothing out the right side, then the left, and working around to the back. That classic style of shirt always has a box pleat down the back to provide some give across the back. This particular shirt also had a hanging loop at the top of the box pleat. The can of Niagara provided a crisp, sharp edge on each side of the pleat, and on the seams of the short sleeves. I carefully released the tiny buttons on the collars and lovingly smoothed the collar flat on the padded board. I swept over it with a cloud of Niagara starch and jitterbugged the iron along the collar. I would not overlook any detail on this labor of love. 

Aha! There it was. Crisp, bright, white, the smell of freshness radiated from it like the sun. Shoulders perfectly balanced on the wire hanger. Tiny buttons secured the collar in military-sharp manner. I fastened every button securely to keep it from shifting. I wanted the sharp crease of the shoulders perfectly aligned along the slope of the hanger.

The next time I saw Smitty, I handed him my teenage love on a hanger.