Name the hardest rug to clean. Did you say shag? If you did, you are right. Shag rugs are a bugger to clean. Eating supper in the living room while watching TV on your portable TV tray? Did some baked beans roll off your plate and onto the rug? Sorry. The pile will instantly snap them up. Watch where you step. Smashed baked beans are hard to find and hard to remove.

Do you get the idea that I am not a fan of the 1960s shag rugs? You are right. Walk across them and the pile flattens down. Do you have a dog? Shag rugs like dog hair almost as much as they like baked beans. Let's name some other inhabitants of the almighty shag. They include: dust mites, various allergens, cigarette smoke and assorted odors, as well as dog pee and poo-poo. Yuck!

When the shag carpeting was newly laid, it was beautiful. That picture didn't last long. How did you care for it? Not with a broom, that's for sure. A good electric vacuum cleaner was needed as well as a shag rug rake. After you got all the ickey-poo you could get out of it, the rake was needed to whip the pile back into shape, so to speak. The vacuum flattened the pile. The rake lifted it up until you and the family walked over it again.

Shag rugs were the pride of the hippie era in the 60s and the 70s. They even came in hippie colors. Of course, if you had an orange sofa you would want to coordinate it with your new orange and black shag carpet.

Are you wondering what brings this to mind? Well, I recently saw an episode on HGTV singing the virtues of shag carpeting. It's not your Uncle Elvis' old Nash Rambler, they tried to say. Shag carpeting has come into its own, if you believe them, but I'm not buying it.

Do you remember the old green indoor-outdoor carpeting? We don't see that anymore, either. There was a day when many porches, basements, etc. were covered in that awful green plastic stuff. Also, whatever happened to the orange and black shag? I guess it went to the same landfill along with the macrame plant hangers and the indoor-outdoor carpeting. Good riddance.

I am not totally against shag carpeting. I like a nice soft, washable and dryable white shag throw rug next to my bed for my little tootsies to snuggle in when I hop out of bed in the morning. To each his own.