Wash Day - July 24, 1933

That's the day I was born. Mom has told me it was on a Monday....the hottest day of the year!
Born at home (a small 6-room house...the largest room measured approximately 10' x 12'), on "wash day", I was something of an interruption of the day when I arrived at 11:00 am! But I was welcomed gladly by my Mom, Dad and an 8-year-old foster brother (Bill).

One of my Dad's sisters, Mamie, was midwife, nurse, housekeeper, cook, and everything else for those first few days after my birth. Today, such care would cost between $4,000 - $5,000, but then, it cost nothing but TIME and EFFORT, because FAMILY always helped FAMILY. It was a good thing, too, because the year I was born, my Dad earned less than $100.00 for an entire year's work in farming.

I grew up, nurtured with love, and taught early that God was Supreme. Church and Sunday School were my first places to "visit", and they were very important to our family as we grew together to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ.

My childhood was quite different than it would have been in today's culture. Children were taught from an early age to fear God, to obey parents, to tell the truth, and learned at an early age that, as soon as we were old enough, we were expected to share in the work on the farm.

As I grew up, my "chores" included gathering the eggs from the hen house, carrying in wood for the woodstove that cooked our food and the fireplace that warmed our living room, "winding" water from a deep well for all purposes. There were no indoor "toilets", only an outhouse some distance from the house, so as I grew, another of my chores was emptying and washing out of the "chamber pot" which sat under the bed at night (our indoor toilet!).

I was taught early on how to plant and care for a garden....how to gather produce at maturity and preserve it for winter's meals. Hard work, but many happy memories as I recall picking green beans (bushels at a time) and sitting under a shade tree preparing them for canning. There were always aunts and cousins to help us one day (and the next day, we helped them)!
FAMILY helping FAMILY working together, laughing together, and sometimes crying together!

"Wash Day" was no way like today. Today we gather the clothes, dump them in an automatic washer with detergent and bleach, go about our other activities, and come back later to transfer them from the washer to the dryer.

Until I was 10 years old, "wash day" began with drawing enough water from the well to fill two No. 3 wash tubs and a cast iron pot which sat on three legs above a carefully laid fire. When I was born, Mom did have an agitator washing machine (prior to that, she washed the clothes by scrubbing them on an old "washboard"), but in order to make certain the clothes were truly cleaned, they were first boiled in water in that cast iron pot, being stirred frequently with a wooden paddle. From there they went into the washing machine where they agitated for about 20 minutes to remove the loosened dirt, then they were transferred into the first "rinse water".
For many years the excess water was"wrung out by hand" as the clothes proceeded through the wash day process. From the first "rinse water", they went into the final rinse water to which had been added "bluing" to make the "whites whiter" and the "brights brighter". (Yes, we had advertising "back then", mostly on billboards and radio)!

Whew! Don't it make you tired just to think about it? Ah, but wait, we're not through yet. We still have to dry the clothes by hanging them on an outdoor clothes line, praying for a day of sunshine with no rain! And then we have to empty all that dirty "wash water" and store the tubs and wash pot until the next week. And then, we had to take the clean clothes off the clothesline, fold and put them away. (And, yes, sometimes heavy winds....or that darned goat.... would knock down the line and the clothes would have to be rewashed!)

Reading what I've just written, I promise I'll never complain again about having to do two loads of laundry (at my convenience) every Saturday.

All that work has made me tired.....So, I'm gonna rest for a while. I'll be back!

WHAT BLESSED RELIEF.......

Whew.....I cannot begin to tell you just how great it feels to escape from the malady which afflicts so much of the world today! Some call it 'AMBITION'; Some call it 'GREED'; some call it "KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES". Still others call it "GETTING BACK TO BASICS".

Whatever you choose to call it is okay with me. This is a FREE COUNTRY we live in (at least for now)! You're gonna find this blog quite different from my first blog, SANGUINITY IN SENESCENCE, in that I'll be sharing more from my personal experiences (75 years worth of them!) things I've learned just from living this long!

A child of the GREAT DEPRESSION ERA (born in 1933), I've seen QUITE A FEW "CHANGES" during my lifetime.....not all of them have been for the better. There are some things I didn't grow up with that I'd certainly hate to have to do without today.....such as running water and indoor plumbing! But there are things we had "back then" which would make today's world so much better!

The first of those "back then" assets is closer-knit families! In today's world, each family member is so involved in his/her individual pursuits that it is often difficult to find even an hour each day to communicate.

The next is neighbors that we really knew....because there were very few movie theaters....no shopping malls....a minimum of "socials" associated with our church attendance. Consequently, when we had a "need" (such as a cup of sugar to finish baking that pound cake) we simply went "next door" and borrowed it from a neighbor, until our next scheduled trip to the grocery store!
Thus was removed today's tendency to hop in the car and go to the store to get some sugar .....often returning home with at least 5 or 6 other items...plus, if you have young children, a new "toy" which before the end of the day had already been discarded.

I'll start from the beginning to share what it was like growing up in a slower-paced society, just beginning to recover from the market crash of 1929. It just might help in the days ahead! So, check back often to learn how things were "back then" (as my daughter used to say...."when dinosaurs roamed the earth")!

I'll be back!