Mama Loved to Wash Clothes

March 20, 2020

I think I have finally figured out why mama liked to wash clothes so much. It was a fact around her house that nothing laid around dirty very long before she had it in the washing machine. Through the years we have talked about how mama liked to wash clothes. I was thinking about mama this morning and the first time I remember her washing clothes. It was when I was about four years old. 

We lived in a small government house out in the country on an Opp route when i was born. It was a nice house and I was born in the front room to the right of the porch. Daddy wanted some land and bought the old Holland Place out from Elba. We moved into the house on route 4. I was four years old. It was a big house with four rooms. We had two iron beds in the large living room, a dining room, kitchen and another bedroom for the boys. We had an outdoor toilet and we had little mice which I thought was just wonderful. Mama didn't think so and she soon put a stop to them.

 

Wash day came and mother, daddy and I headed straight across the dirt road in front of our house, down to the woods where there was a stream of water. Daddy had taken the old black wash pot down there and set it up beside the creek. He had stumps and had #3 washtubs setting on them. I think there were two or three tubs. A fire was set under the wash pot to heat the water taken from the stream. Mama put the clothes and lye soap, I assume, in it to wash the clothes. She had a battling stick daddy had made in which she punched down the clothes and pulled from the pot when she thought they were clean. She laid them on a stump and beat them. I didn't pay much attention because I was enjoying being in the woods near a stream of water and near them. Mama rung the clothes out by hand and then put them in the first tub of water, juggled them up and down, squeezed them out by hand and then on to the next tub. She really believed in rinsing her clothes well. After the job was done they lugged the clothes back up the hill to our house and to the clothes line out back where she hung them in the sun to dry. Mondays were usually wash day.

From that primitive way of washing clothes mama moved on to having a wringer type electric machine out underneath a shed behind the house. She no longer had to wring the clothes out by hand because the washer had a wringer up top. We just positioned them just right, sent them through and  the excess water was rung out. She used that washer for years and continued to hang the clothes to dry on the line. 

Mama and Daddy built a new house in 1960 on the Old Holland Place. I remember when mama bought her first electric washer and dryer. They were used but she didn't care. She put them in the utility room right behind the carport. I can see now why they made her so happy. Mama had come a long way.

Later in her life after Daddy died, she sold the house on route 4 and moved to Elba across the street from her son and family. She moved her washer and dryer inside her house. She could really wash clothes now. They were right beside her kitchen. We never understood why mama liked to wash clothes so much, but I think after today I have it figured out. She came a long way in her 102 1/2 years. She really did.

She loved to wash clothes.