Dear Ann Landers,
I have indeed been asked the question before. The best response came from Nancy Drechsler of North Carolina: Oh where, oh where is the other sock? Is it under the bed, or caught in the casters, Or clinging to the basement rafters? Trapped in the plumbing? Stuffed in a shoe? In a darkened corner Hiding from you? Have they gone to camp and returned alone? Been kicked off, perhaps, by the telephone? An argyle a starling's home, Striped sock found its way to Rome? Perhaps there is an odd sock elf, Who takes them to some woodsy shelf. But truthfully, I know their fate The dirty ones disintegrate. Dear Nancy: It's true. Old socks never die. They just fade away. In a later column, a reader gave me a more logical explanation: Single socks often get caught in the agitator and flip between the drum and the side of the washer. You can find them if you ever take the machine apart. If you lose them in the dryer, then you're on your own. When I first began writing this column, a lot of my mail concerned house-keeping issues-should the sheets be ironed? Should a wife serve her family breakfast wearing rollers and a bathrobe? Of course, back in the 1950s, no one knew about permanent-press linens nor would anyone consider telling the husband to pitch in-after all, most women stayed at home, and housework was their job. When I told a reader that she didn't need to apologize for being in her bathrobe when she greeted a salesman at 9:00 in the morning, all hell broke loose. This is what happened in 1958:

Dear Readers,
I've been catching heat from 49 states (including Alaska) plus a beef from Dusseldorf, Germany. Typical comment: "Ann Landers, what do you mean by backing up sloppy housewives who slosh around in bathrobes all day?" The con-sensus is that 9:00 A.M. is time enough for any housewife to be dressed in a crisp house dress ready to greet the bright-eyed, enterprising in-surance agent. Most of the bleats came from men-naturally. I still say a woman's home is her castle and there's no reason to get fully clothed to see her family off to work or school-unless she wants to. This is not to imply that women should appear at the breakfast table with knotted hair, looking lumpy in an old beat-up kimono and maribou bedroom slippers. There are attractive housecoats-in fact, they are much like the Hoover aprons of 20 years ago. Men, of course, are expected to dress the first thing in the morning. They could hardly go to work in their pajamas. On Sunday, however, how many men get dressed as if they're going to work? Let's face it. Some women are slobs even when fully dressed. And some women can be appetizing in a housecoat. I see no reason for any-one to object if a woman wants to indulge in a shortcut-least of all a guy who comes by to sell insurance. Then I printed a letter from a man who said: "Why defend the average Amer-ican housewife, Ann Landers? She's a pig, and you know it. " Here's what hap-pened next: Dear Readers: This column hasn't provoked such a violent re-sponse since I suggested that Elvis Presley was a dancer-not a singer. Hundreds of irate women, indignant husbands, and children wrote to give that reader a verbal pasting and defend the honor of the Aver-age American Housewife. Such spirited response rates a full day's column-and here it is: From Dallas: Ed like to tell that idiot what the "average American pig" did this morning. Got up at 6:30 A.M. Made a whopping big breakfast for my husband, four piglets and a sow (my mother-in-law lives with us). Packed a lunch for "Porky" (my husband) and set dough for four loaves of bread. By 10:30, the sty was in order, and I ironed yesterday's laundry until noon, when I stopped to make lunch for anywhere from four to eight kids, as each one usually brings a friend. By 2:30, the lunch dishes were cleaned up, a cake was in the oven for a church bazaar, also an apple pie for the family. Went grocery shopping for the week, spent 40 minutes on the phone for PTA (I'm president), prepared the swill for dinner, sewed together my daughter's dancing costume and ran next door to help give a sick child medicine. (Mother can't handle him.) This was one of my "light" days, but even at that, I didn't have much time to wallow around in the mud. I'm not looking for any medals. Millions of American women do as much and more. So, as Ann Landers says, "Put your nose back in joint, buster." Manitowoc, Wis.: If the average American housewife is a pig, it's be-cause the average American male is a boar. -Informed Mexico, Mo.: I am 10 years old and in the fifth grade. My mother is not a pig. She is a very neat person. -Allen Chicago: I never wrote to a paper before, but no jerk is going to call my wife a pig and get away with it. She's a wonderful wife and mother and I have yet to pay a laundry bill or eat a frozen pie in the 15 years we've been married. --Burned Up So much for the slobs. What about ironing the sheets and the undershorts? Would any wife consider doing this today? I would never suggest it now, but I did in 1959: