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!