The ladies of the Sunshine Laundry...

photo copyright; BNPS.co.uk


When she was growing up she would stop by the laundry and visit her grandmother on her way home from school.

She would open the doors and immediately be hit by the heat and humidity of the steam irons and giant white and grey mangles.

The smell of bleach, starch and sweat.

This was hard work and her grandmother would come home tired and withered.

But there was also something elegant about it.

Through the thick rising steam,
you could just make out the shapes of women floating across the floor
as they folded huge sheets and table cloths used in some of the most expensive
and exclusive hotels in the city.

It took several of them to fold one enormous fabric sheath.

Watching them was like watching a ballet.

Their movements were precise and coordinated, learned over years of practice.

They swooped and swirled.

In and out, back and forth in a dance too light and delicate for such
harsh and exhausting work.

Every afternoon, she'd be engulfed in hugs.

Folded into the arms of women who had known her ever since she could remember.

They always had candy in their pockets,
and lavished big sweaty kisses on her cheeks.

They were the poor.

They were the immigrants

They were the working class.

Everything has a story...

Looking at it , it seems like just another old kitchen utensil but the ravioli cutter has quite a history behind it...


We couldn't mention the Mafia out loud.

In our house it was whispered like people used to whisper cancer.

My grandparents were both from Sicily you see.

It wasn't until I was in my teens that I heard about my great Uncle Frank.

It seems Uncle Frank was a Don in the, you know the M word.

He was arrested for tax evasion and sent to federal prison.

Coincidentally my grandmother had the exact same name as Franks younger sister and was able to visit him in prison under the guise of being said sister.

While in that prison Frank was being rehabilitated and one of the things they thought would do the trick was to have the inmates participate in wood working, metal workshops and such.

Frank worked with metal and being Italian, had made a ravioli cutter.
It was made of brass and copper and steel and it was given to my grandmother on one of her visits to the prison.

Not long after leaving prison, Frank disappeared.

They found him in the desert in southern California.

He had been on his way to his farm where he produced, you guessed it, olive oil when he met a very unsettling fate.

Frank was the recipient of an Italian neck tie.

That was in the thirties.

The ravioli cutter became a fixture during my childhood.

Something that was always around and always in use.

Grandma used it faithfully until she died.

Cutting hand made ravioli to serve to family and friends for many years.

I inherited the cutter when grandma passed away and I have it to this day.