Ex-rug beaters come out of the closet, dusting off old memories with mixed emotions

In reminiscing recently about home appliances that have been outmoded by modern technology, I mentioned that humblest of tools--the rug beater.

I wasn’t sure that anyone else would remember it. The rug beater has long since been replaced by the vacuum cleaner, whose banshee whine has strained so many marriages.

In its simplest form, the rug beater consisted of loops--or a figure 8--of heavy wire, attached to a wooden handle. You took your rug outdoors, hung it on the clothesline and beat the dust out of it with the beater.

Almost invariably, mothers assigned this task to their small boys, and it was among the most tedious and disagreeable jobs that befell us. As I suggested, in giving a rug its whacks I sometimes imagined that the rug was my mother. I was paying her back for forcing this indignity on me.

Dirck C. Meengs of Thousand Oaks writes that old-fashioned rug beaters are a common item at Southern California swap meets, though more often than not they are “reproductions.” To authenticate a vintage beater, he says, you must check the gauge of the wire and the condition of the wood.

“There are purveyors of nostalgia who will stop at nothing,” he warns.

That rug beaters are in demand underlines the current fad for anything that comes from those supposedly more innocent times--whether cars, clothes or cocktails. (I hear the Singapore sling is coming back!)

Henry E. Rutzebeck of Sunland echoes my memory of beating rugs.

“I remember beating the rug until my arms and shoulders were limp and my spirit demoralized,” he writes. “My mother would come out, give the object of my frustration one well-placed whack and, in a cloud of smoking dust, instruct: ‘Beat more!’ ”

He adds: “Today’s mass-produced rugs would never survive the ritual beatings such as we were trained to administer in the early ‘20s.”

L. S. Stowe of Riverside has a similar memory of the agony: “Your article brought very clearly to mind the bleeding knuckles I always wound up with after the many times I spent a half-hour trying to tear the rug apart with the beater. . . . “

J. B. (Zeke) Summers of Rancho Palos Verdes sends me the mail order catalogue of the Lynchburg (Tenn.) Hardware General Store, which advertises “All Goods Worth Price Charged” and “Featuring Truly Fine Gifts.”

On Page 23 the catalogue lists “authentic rug and sofa beaters, as old as the hills,” and pictures four different styles, each with wire loops and wooden handle.

The copy says: “Before we had 10-speed, 14-horsepower computer-driven vacuum cleaners, the way you got a rug clean was to hang it out on the clothesline and beat the living daylights out of it with a rug beater like you see here. . . . Well, these aren’t originals, but they’re as close as you can get. . . . “

Honest advertising, anyway.

The catalogue also offers a country washing machine (“also known as a washboard”), blue denim hogwashers (bib overalls) and mule driver shirts. (“To get out and handle a mule, you’ve got to be properly attired.”)

G. Bording Mathieu, professor of German, emeritus, Cal State Fullerton, writes that a clothesline was strong enough for small rugs, but for larger ones you needed a metal bar.

“Today many German housing projects still have the Teppichklopferstange (rug beater bar) for use in the courtyard,” he says, “although the Staubsauger (dust sucker) is used by millions.”

Prof. Mathieu says he understood my “Freudian analysis of the kid beating his/her parents vicariously when told to clean the carpet.”

But he reports that in Germany, where he grew up from 1921 to 1933, it was the other way around, and apparently still is today. “It is not the kids that beat up their parents in effigy but parents who beat their kids into obedience with a rug beater.”

As evidence, he sends a post-card reproduction of a poster by the famous German satirist Klaus Staeck. It shows a hand holding a rug beater, with the caption: “Verteidigt die elterliche Gewalt! Lieber elterliche Sorge als elterliche Gewalt.”

Noting that Gewalt means both “violence” and “authority,” Mathieu translates this as “Defend parental authority or violence. Better parental care than parental violence.”

That sounds ambiguous to me; but he says it means that German parents have used rug beaters on their children, and Staeck is protesting this abuse.

“As I recall,” writes Bob Harris of Calabasas, “when my mother handed me the carpet beater, she said, ‘Beat it,’ and she didn’t mean ‘scram.’ “It also seems to me that no matter how long I ‘beated,’ the dust was never fully depleted.”

Harris also recalls: “I recently had occasion to ‘air out’ a beautiful afghan from my bedroom. After hanging it to hooks on the porch ceiling, I decided it would be nice to beat it a bit. In the absence of a beater, or tennis racket, or baseball bat, or even a nice stick, I employed a fly swatter--at low efficiency. . . . “

I hope Harris’ afghan wasn’t a dog.

Nadine Colt of Moorpark writes that she has a rattan rug beater that is shaped much like the original wire ones.

“I bought my rug beater in an open marketplace in a city in Yugoslavia. You can imagine the great difficulty in packing this in my suitcase. My husband and I have an agreement: If you buy something on a trip, it is your own responsibility to get it home.”

What an equitable idea!

I wish I’d thought of that before my wife bought the balalaika in Leningrad.