Clothes once washed and rinsed were manually fed through the wringer, then placed on clotheslines to dry. It was indeed possible to get a tit in the wringer!
LOL, I distinctly remember the first time I heard that phrase “tits-up” when I was in the USN as a mechanic.
One of our planes had been having an increasing number of problems, until it went down hard one day and I heard the Maintenance Chief say to someone “Double-Nuts went tits-up today” and I knew exactly what it meant! I thought it was hilarious!
When I was older, my mom was having a heated disagreement with some other woman, and when I asked what was going on, she said “She has her tits in a wringer about some thing...”
I thought that phrase was funny as all get out too, especially coming from her!
I admit, I have thought many times about the origin of that phrase “tits in a wringer” and it sounded a lot like an insult a woman would hurl at another woman!
I remember the phrase from the movie “So I married an axe murderer.” Charlie’s Dad, played by Mike Myers, used the phrase when talking about Colonel Sanders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8yWWz0ROD0
Clothes once washed and rinsed were manually fed through the wringer, then placed on clotheslines to dry. It was indeed possible to get a tit in the wringer!
The old washing machines had wringers, two rollers the size of rolling pins that you squeezed the water out of the wet cloths from the washing machine and into the spin dryer.