Mama washed clothes down by the creek

Mama always liked to wash clothes. I've been thinking about how she did that all through her years. I guess I was four years old when we moved to the Old Holland Place on Packing House road in Elba. (There's a funny story still to be told about that, too.) I remember being about four years old and going with mother across the country road in front of our house. We then went down a hill until we found a stream of water. That's where she washed our clothes. The old black wash pot was down by the stream and she built a fire underneath it so as to have hot/warm water. I wonder if Daddy cut the tree that left a stump for Mother to set her tubs of clothes on. She had a battling stick with which she beat the dirt out of the clothes. and she used it to poke the clothes down and stir them in the boiling pot of water. When finished she lifted the clothes out with the battling stick. Her soap was lye soap which she had made. She always had three aluminum tubs to rinse her clothes in. When all was said and done, she carried those clothes back up the hill, across the road, and to the clothesline and hung them out to dry. Daddy always made sure Mama had a good clothes line. Mama didn't just hang the clothes in any way on the line, but just the right way according to her. She taught me early on to help. All the handkerchiefs were together on the line, the undershirts, the shirts, the pillowcases, bath cloths and etc. It made for a neat looking clothesline of clothes, and I still hang things that way when I use the clothesline.

Some years later mother got a wringer washing machine. We still used three tubs when washing/rinsing the clothes. The white wringer washer was housed underneath an open shed out behind our house. The chickens had their open bins nailed on the side of the shed where they had straw and laid their eggs every day which we ate. I guess they didn't do much laying of eggs when we were washing clothes because there was lots of action going on behind their little boxes. I was so happy when mother taught me to take the clothes from the washer and put them through the wringer. She always warned me not to get my hands caught in it. We continued to wash our clothes that way for years and were happy to do so. I remember Mama had special wire frames that she stuck down in daddy's pants legs to make them dry smoother. That always looked funny to me to see daddy's pants with flat stiff legs hanging downward hanging on the clothesline.

After we moved into our new house in the early 1960's, mama got her first automatic washing machine. It was placed in the utility room at the end of the carport. Mama was so proud of it. We continued to hang the clothes on the line, but we were so happy to have an automatic washing machine. Pretty soon Mama found a used clothes dryer and bought it. Now we were really in business. 

You know, I was just thinking, that through all the years with all the trouble and trials Mama went through, I never heard her complain about her situation. She always worked to make things better and she did. Wow, what a woman she was.