Of course in those days, ladies always wore skirts or dresses and that included the little ladies. The only time we wore jeans was when we were doing some kind of farm work. And as we grew, we did plenty of that -- and we spent quite a bit of our time at that age just being in the way, I suspect. But how can you teach a work ethic to children if they do not participate in the work that needs to be done? Just about every child, for instance, can shell peas and carry the pods to throw over the fence into a pig trough, right? We were always involved in what was being done. Labor was necessarily a way of life for all. And it was a GOOD thing!
I can remember the old wash days at Grammie Muriel's house. It was pretty much a day-long process. She always had a boiler of water on the stove and a big wooden fork-like device to stir the whites in the boiling, chlorinated water. Oh, when those sheets came off the line they were bright as the summer sun.
On wash day (Monday), the old Maytag would be pulled out onto the kitchen floor and filled with warm water from the "tank" on the side of the woodstove and mixed with hand pumped cold water to make the wash water a workable temperature. At the back of the washing machine, two chairs sat facing each other to hold the galvanized metal rinse tub that doubled as a unit to rinse clothing and as a bath tub for the Saturday night bath regimen (that is another story). The wash/rinse tub was always filled with cold water.
Clothing was sorted into heaps on the kitchen floor and it was a place to tumble and play in the laundry that waited there. Sometimes we would be told to get out of the piles of clothes and linens. I suppose when the piles started to meld together!
First steps were to put the "whites" into the washing machine, add laundry soap (I remember one brand was Oxydol), and start the agitator. As the machine hummed and the water swished, we were carefully kept away from the machine. But the most dangerous element in the washing process, aside from the boiling hot water on the stove, was the wringer itself! Once the agitator was turned off, pieces of clothing were taken out and sent one by one through the wringer. Early on, the wringers were operated manually by turning a crank and the clothes would go through two rollers to squeeze out the excess wash water and send them into the rinse tub.
We loved the rinse tub because we could work and play all at once. It was our job to swish the clean clothing through the rinse water to get out the detergent residue. Once we had spilled sufficient water onto the floor, Grammie would take over and we would have to step back while she put the rinsed items back through the wringer. She would hand each "wrung out" item to us and we could deposit it into the laundry basket (which we called "clothes basket").
Then it was to the clothes lines that were strung between the shed at Grammie's back door and the corner of Grampie's barn. Oh, did those things smell wonderful when we held them, freshly dried, to our faces. And even then the work wasn't done, since almost every item had to be run through the "mangle" (flat items) or ironed traditionally.
I DO remember flat irons being heated on the wood stove and used, as well as the modern electric iron which wasn't really iron and wasn't as heavy. And, again ... we were to stay AWAY from the iron!. We could hand the "sprinkled" clothes, one item at a time to whoever was doing the ironing. But it was a long time before we learned that chore -- and even then we melted the edges of plastic buttons and left some burn marks on our hands and arms.
The thing that I remember MOST vividly about laundry day was seeing the great beads of sweat on my grandmother's forehead and the streams of perspiration running down her face and dripping off her nose.
You folks of the 21st century, please remember to thank the Lord for a washer/dryer! I am afraid, even as I say it to you that you might not be as well off as we were, though. It seems that many people have lost the meaning and satisfaction of work well done. Let that not be YOU! The Bible says that whatever we do, we are to do it with all of our might. And we are to do it for the glory of God, who has done SO MUCH for us.
Grampie told me this: "I remember laundry day at Aunt Beaulah's more than I remember it at home. That is probably because it was more interesting at her house. I remember that the laundry was done outside and that the tubs were larger than the wash tub that we used at home. The water was heated by burning corn cobs under these big tubs (they had a farm). I remember the lye soap and the pungent odor which almost burned my nostrils."
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