Wash Day On The Farm

When my family moved to the dairy farm in 1941 where I grew up we had no electricity though most of the rest of the area did.  For a distance of about one mile in each direction along our road the modern miracle of rural electricity was not to be for several years following.  One of our more aged neighbors had it firmly fixed in his mind that what was good enough for his daddy was good enough for him.  His daddy didn’t need any of this new-fangled electricity stuff so he guessed he didn’t need it either.  Until all farms along the two-mile stretch of road wanted electricity the power company would give it to none of us.

Thus we got along much as had folks long before electricity had been commonly brought to the public.  A typical Monday washday meant some of us boys hand pumped water from the well in the back yard into buckets and carried them into the house to the washing machine and rinse tubs.  Once the Maytag washing machine tub was filled mother would place a selected pile of clothes into it.  Then it was time to hang the pancake muffler attached to a flexible metal exhaust pipe out the window to carry away the carbon monoxide and fumes.  With a couple of quick steps on the lever starter the wash day was in full swing.

I used to like to sit in a rocker while the little engine purred along, slowly covering my ears and opening them again to listen to the sounds change, much like listening to a shell at the sea shore.  We, of course, never did that.  The closest sea shore was somewhere around a million miles away.  Once the washing machine agitator wrestled with the clothes long enough, mother changed a lever position on the side of the machine which controlled a transmission.  This stopped the agitator from moving.  Then it was move another lever on the wringer which started the rollers in motion.  The clothes were then passed through the wringer with the removed water running back into the washer.  The damp clothes fell into the first rinse tub.  Once that part was complete, another batch of clothes, darker in color, went into the washing machine.  While they washed, with the movement of another lever the wringer was swung over to a position between the two rinse tubs.  Then the clothes were passed once more through the wringer from the first rinse to the second rinse.  Then it was time to wring them for a third time into a bushel basket.  Once that stage was done the beautifully clean clothes were carried to the outdoor clothes line where they were hung to dry.  Some of the clothes pins were a 6” long wooden staple, while others were spring loaded snap action.

Load after load were treated in this manner until the washing was completed for the week.  When my younger brother was born mother scrubbed the diapers on a hand scrub board, outdoors in the back yard.  As he was the 9^th child born unto my parents, wash day understandably took a while.