Although it is several days after the Equinox (sorry, I was busy), it’s still close enough to let you in on a dockside tradition. If you have spent any time around saltwater sailors you may be familiar with The Burning of the Socks. If not, the poem below will explain.
Here are a few more ship building tools to match to the tools on the sign board. It may seem the cupid in the upper left is holding a hurley, but that is highly unlikely.
–Suzanne Ellison
I had to pull out my Webster’s Third to look up “hurley”. 😁
If your socks were sturdy enough to wear for 6 months without washing, and still remain somewhat comfortable and hole free, then the socks deserve to be washed, and rinsed, and at least kept as spares.
Even 500 years ago, lye, soap, and vinegar were available for washing clothes, including wool, and would have worked fine.
If you want to bring back a useful sailor tradition, bring back sleeping on duck feather filled wax cloth mattress sacks.
Duck feathers have a nice springy feel, and when boats capsize, the duck feather filled sacks could be used as flotation devices so the sailors didn’t drown.
Just turn them inside out. Works for underpants.
The sock-burning tradition is known down here on the Alabama Gulf Coast, too. But I’m not sure if it’s actually still practiced. I do know that true sailing-types still refuse to wear socks in the summer months.
There’s a great kids book by Robert Munsch about just such a smelly hosiery scenario.