The Lint Filter is born

Lint has always held a special place in my heart. It all started as a child on cold winter days when Mom ran the clothes dryer, which was situated in a corner of the kitchen. The big, white Norge was noisy and tended to walk around its corner of the room a little bit, but a good shove with your hip put it back in its place.

My job, for as long as I can remember, was to remove the length of pantyhose that was affixed to the hose with a rubber band, black with ink from the newspaper. The hose stuck out in the kitchen and I had to remove the lint from that pantyhose. It was like peeling a soft blob of fur from the hide. But not in a gross way; in a warm, fuzzy way, literally.

Before we knew it, we were all grown up and we had clothes dryers of our own. One sister, you know who you are MarySue, did a lot of laundry. It was second nature to us, the other three sisters, to trot down to the basement at her house and empty the clothes (there were always clothes) from the washer into the dryer, or on nice days, haul the clothes out to the clothesline.

One day Doris, the compulsive cleaning sister of the bunch, brought up a wad of dryer lint that was as impressive a specimen as I've ever seen.

Impressive is actually an understatement.

It was large.

As large as a football, maybe even a basketball. How it stayed trapped in the lint filter is baffling. Did MarySue keep a fire extinguisher close by? But Doris freed the lint wad and brought it to the kitchen for all to see! And we took turns feeling its heft, marveling at the colors, analyzing it for hair (or lack thereof) in its mass.

This sealed the deal. Lint has been a favorite in our family ever since.