Laundry Room Dryer Incident

Written By:  Andrew Eide

In the same laundry room shed where my cat Snowball died we had, of course, our laundry room at 4022 Fullington Street in Oakland, California.

Remember this was in the late-50’s and the washers and dryers back then were manufactured differently than they are today.

On our dryer there was a single red button on the dial that, when you pushed the button, it defaulted to a 60 minute normal drying cycle. I guess back then that was the normal cycle everyone used so they made the machine to default to that drying cycle with one push of one red button.

I walked into the laundry room just as I saw the dryer on its current cycle go off. I wasn’t old enough to know that the clothes inside the dryer were already dry. So I walked in, pushed the red button, and the dryer started up so I ran out of the shed as I was scared why the dryer just started up like that.

About 20 minutes later my mother came out and went into the laundry room. When she saw the dryer going, nearly a half hour longer than she knows she set it for, she asked me and I told her I pushed the red button.

She informed me that when the dryer goes off it means the clothes are dry and you don’t need to run it again. When she opened the door of the dryer the clothes were so hot she couldn’t even tough them without getting burned.

Mother explained to me that running a load of dry clothes in the dryer could cause the clothes to catch fire and burn up the dryer and the house. I didn’t know that clothing that still has water in it from the wash don’t get that hot and won’t catch fire.

I know that now and I will never make that mistake again.