Growing Up On Muddy Creek:
Every Day is Mother's Day, but Monday was Always Wash Day
By Perry Piper
The old saying that "A man does work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done" aptly fits the life of a 1920-era family. Not only did the woman's work never end, but each day had its own obligations, and many were weekly routines to be done over and over and over.
Monday was wash day. It seems that all over the country, Monday was reserved for doing the wash, or "The Laundry," as it was known in high society. The wash was the dirty (I use that term loosely) or soiled clothing, as well as rags - dish rags, wash rags, scouring rags, strainer rags, and rags that would be torn into long strips and woven into rugs. Nothing was thrown away Often times one could see patches on patches, and most woolen clothing ended up as a rag rug.
Clothing consisted of bib overalls, with weeks' worth of accumulations of caked-on axle grease, impregnated with cockle burrs and stick tights; heavy woolen skirts and an occasional long John (these became soiled enough to stand alone). Then there were BVDs, and long cotton stockings that had to be dried on wooden stretchers, and cotton gloves. In the fall, during corn shucking days, these were used and re-used until both thumbs were worn through, then they were patched and worn out again. Husking gloves had an extra thumb on top so that they could be worn on either hand, to wear out both sides. Then there were the ladies' unmentionables: The knee-length bloomers, petticoats and camisoles usually hung demurely inside a pillow case on the line.
Dad always said "Never send a boy to do a man's job," so a chunk of strong, homemade lye soap was. shaved into the heating water. It took a strong soap to dissolve farm dirt of that era, and the mere mention of it sends waves of that pungent, nose-rasping smell through my memory. It took strong soap to dissolve farm dirt of that era, and the mere mention of it sends waves of that pungent nose-rasping smell through my memory.
Just before breakfast, the hot water was poured into the big wooden (or galvanized) wash tubs and the dirty clothes put to soak. For a long time, many women (including my mother) depended entirely on the wash board and bare knuckles to get their clothes clean. Pioneer and primitive women, like Old Josie the Pawnee Indian woman who squatted with her man Clarence on Muddy Creek for several years, used a flat rock or heavy board and pounded the dirt from the clothes with a club. Me and Lewie would go down to the grove and marvel at how clean her gingham dresses would come by just pounding them on that old end gate.
Mama's wash board was one of the newer ones. It had a ribbed copper plate in a frame on which the wet clothes were rubbed by hand. The wash tub was set on a waist-high stool and the washboard inserted into the mass of soaking soapy clothes. A dirty shirt was pulled out of the water and rubbed on the board, dipped into the water and rubbed again; dip, rub, turn, dip, rub, turn, until the entire shirt had been rubbed clean. Years later, Dad was able to buy her a patented rocker-type washing machine from Sears and Sawbuck that took much of the drudgery from wash day, but even then, cuffs and collars had to be specially rubbed. One of the commercial soaps warned people of the "Ring around the Collar" and claimed that folks were noticing it, and I guess many did, for sales of that product skyrocketed.
The rubbed-clean shirts were then wrung out by hand, or if the farmwife was lucky enough to have one of the new double wringers that Hodge Brothers were touting in the Beacon, she could wring them through that into a tub of clean water. After a thorough dousing in the rinse water to get out all of the lye soap, the shirts were again wrung semi-dry and placed into the wicker wash basket.
Not the white goods, however. While many women boiled the white clothes to get them white, some - like Mama - used a second rinse that contained bluing, a blue chalk product that made the yellowish-white a bright bluish-white. In either case, the shirt collars and cuffs were dipped into a starch solution to make them nice and stiff when they were dry. Finally, the clothes were wrung out again, and all carried out to the back yard clothesline.
The better clothes lines were two lengths of galvanized wire cable about an eighth of an inch thick between two "T" posts. But why pay $2 for a roll of cable when twice as much number nine wire could be had for the same money, and "you never know when you will be needing a piece of heavy wire around the farm."? Mama's clothes lines (and there were several for her family's needs) ran from the smoke house overhead out to a hedge post by the walnut tree, and then over to the sycamore by the north well, probably 150 feet in all. She had Dad cut her several straight hickory clothes props to hold up the heavy load. A damp rag had to be used each wash day to wipe rust and dirt from the wire before it could be used.