WASH DAY YEARS AGO!

I will try to tell you about what it was like years ago on wash day. My mother would put on a huge copper boiler (I told you the size yesterday) on the coal burning cookstove. The water was brought up to boiling and then transferred to a wringer washing machine that was put in the kitchen. Two huge galvanized rinse tubs were used to rinse the water. These had to be pumped from our cistern water. Once the water was all hot and rinse water was poured in the tubs, the wringer washing machine was ready to use. Of course, starch had to be made for the cotton clothes and blueing balls was put in a little bag, to make the white clothes, whiter. Then the homemade soap was melted with water on the stove and poured into the washing machine.

The clothes had to be sorted according to whites, colored and farm work clothes. After the clothes were washed and rinsed, a trip to the clothes line was made. The line had to be washed off, so the clothes wouldn't get soiled. Clothes were hung by clothes pins. One always had to watch out for rain during drying time on the clothes line. If it looked like rain, we had to go out and get the clothes off the line before they were completely dried and then hang them up again.

Another thing we had to consider was the winds direction. If the wind was blowing from the road, we were in trouble because of dust would get on the wet clothes when people drove by. Our road wasn't traveled all that much so we were probably OK most of the time. After they were dry, we had to go out and fold the clothes and put them into the basket for the return trip to the house.

Now on winter days or freezing days, the clothes would freeze outside and not dry, so we hung them in behind our woodburning stove in the family room on racks. These racks would not hold all the clothes, so we strung lines from one end of the room to the other end to hold the rest of the clothes. Until the clothes were dried, we duck underneath of the clothes when we were in our main living quarters.

All the moisture in the air in the house probably kept us from getting colds in our chest. In summer (before electricity) my mother would do her laundry in a washhouse with a powered driven motor and belt to turn the clothes in the machine.

My mother, before any of us were born, was pregnant with her first child and she was doing the laundry and got her clothes caught in the belt from the motor and it tightened up around her and she had a miscarriage later in her pregnancy. I learned this out just this year. I knew my mother miscarried a child, but didn't know the cause of the miscarriage. My dad wasn't too far away, and came to her rescue or it could have been even worse.

Well, after all the clothes were washed and hung outside to dry, it was pure delight to sleep with sheets that were dried outdoors. If you ever slept between fresh air dried sheets, you would never forget it. Almost all of the clothes were sprinkled and ironed before putting away.

What I remember and liked most about laundry day, was that my mother would make stew for dinner. It would consist of whole potatoes, carrots, turnips and any other vegetable that was growing in the garden. This was cooked with stew meat and today is still my favorite meal of by gone years.

Wisdom of the day--People will be judged by the way God sees them not by the way we see them.