Washing and Ironing The Day Away

by Douglas Fodge



No one, and I mean no one, in our family liked to do the laundry. But frequently an all too familiar refrain from Mama was, “Douglas Walter, I need you to help do the wash tomorrow before you leave for whatever you have planned.” “Oh nooo, Mama do I have to?” “Well, you can’t go around in dirty clothes, so, yes, you have to wash them.” When Mama used my two given names, I knew there wasn’t any sense in arguing, and the next morning I was laundering and helping. After this exchange with Mama, Dolly Parton’s lyrics expressed my feelings,

“ Washday Blues”

Last Saturday night I looked like a princess dressed in calico
Now blue Monday washday I look like a lady hobo
Just rubbin’ and scrubbin’ and raisin’ ‘em out
I gotta hang ‘em out early; I hope the sun comes out
(Wash ‘em out, ring ‘em out, hang ‘em on the line
Get a little tired, just think about the good times) washday blues…….

“Ah,” you say, “that’s nothing special, every kid had to do their laundry.” True enough, our boys helped do their laundry when they were old enough to participate, but their activity consisted of hauling their dirty clothes to the washroom, dumping the clothing into the washing machine, adding some perfumed detergent, selecting the appropriate wash and rinse cycle and then taking off for extracurricular activities. Although instructions to our boys and to me were almost identical, the similarity ended there unless you consider that all of us used hot water and soap.

Other families had utilities, but we didn’t, and we were one of the last families to get them. However, we had as much pride as others, and this included the desire to wear clean clothes, the few that we had. A command to be ready to do your laundry meant to be ready to work, sans electricity, running water, gas-fired stoves and other modern conveniences. When we laundered we did it with a washboard and tub supplemented with water heated on either the wood-burning cook stove or rarely in a black, 20-gallon cauldron surrounded by a pile of burning wood. We used bar or powdered soap purchased from the local grocery store, or occasionally we used homemade lye soap. Neither of these soaps was similar to modern detergents. Store-bought soap was made with ingredients of higher purity than homemade soap, but they were almost identical otherwise.

Laundering activity at our home occurred no matter what kind of weather or temperature. We started by drawing bucketsful of water from our cistern and heating it to boiling. We had a pulley and a long chain with a big galvanized metal bucket on the end. You dropped the bucket into the cistern, let it fill and then hauled it up. If you pulled a few buckets up each morning, your arms got quite a workout. We set two number 3 washtubs on the edge of the back porch and filled them about halfway full with water. The tub for washing was filled primarily with boiling water and the tub for rinse water received a mixture of cold water and hot water. If we had a large amount of clothes to wash, we had to draw and heat water from the cistern several times, and before we were finished washing we expended plenty of energy.

Clothes were sorted into groups that could be washed together. We washed the white clothes first, followed by colored clothes and finally our jeans and other really dirty work clothes. It worked best if we let each group soak in the hot water a few minutes before the washing process started, and this was especially the case for Daddy’s work clothes from the foundry since they were covered with fine black dust. If the outside temperature was cold, we heated and added boiling water to the wash water several times.

To wash the clothes we stood on the ground, inserted the washboard in the wash water and bent over and grabbed the clothing one piece at a time. The top 6 inches of a washboard was wooden and across the bottom of this section a 1 x 2 retained the bar soap. In the washing process, clothing was pulled out of the hot wash water, and rubbed thoroughly with the bar soap. Below the retaining bar for the soap was the metal scrub board portion, and beneath the metal were two short legs that protruded to the bottom of the tub. The washboard was about 2 feet long and about 40% of it was the metal scrubbing surface – the business portion of the device. Moving parts were arms and hands, huffing and puffing lungs, and aching back muscles. The metal scrubbing surface was a series of about 20 ribs running horizontal to the surface of the wash water. Each rib had a twist that ran the length of each rib, and this gave it a rough surface. The metal didn’t rust, and I suspect that it was composed of steel and brass. Since the washing action was forceful across the ribs of the metal surface, it would be correct if one concluded that a person’s knuckles took quite a beating. If your back didn’t give out, your knuckles held up, and you didn’t let the water get too cold, then dirty clothes rubbed with soap and scrubbed over the metal ribs were cleaned after just a few scrubbings.

Once the piece of clothing was sufficiently free of dirt and grime from the scrubbing process, you wrung out the soapsuds and water, and pitched the garment into the rinse water. We swirled the clothing around in the rinse tub, wrung out the water and repeated the process until the water ran clear. If the weather was acceptable, we hung the clothes outside, but inside otherwise. Hanging the clothes on a line to dry was the easy part of the operation. After the clothing dried on the line, and that wasn’t very long in the strong winds that seemed to blow forever, then it was time to bring them in and do the ironing. The entire washing process usually took a few hours to complete, if not most of the day for large loads of clothes.

When I have told this story to others, many have asked if we wrung the soap and water out of the clothes with a wringer. The answer to that question was yes, a wringer manufactured using traditional genetic engineering procedures. Mama wrung soap and water out of the clothes with her hands, and initially I couldn’t, but gradually I developed enough strength and stamina to do it. There were some things that Mama couldn’t do, but this wasn’t one of them. She could wring out clothes and anything else that required strong hands without much help, and for a slightly built woman, she had a grip that would make physical fitness aficionados proud. Wringing out the clothes could be particularly grueling on cold days since we worked on the north side of the house and there wasn’t any windbreak between Northeast Texas and Canada, excluding numerous barbed wire fences, and they didn’t stop the wind. We spent the morning with our backside in the cold winds, but at least they dried the wash, although they tamed our spirits and froze our hands and other unmentionable anatomical parts.

We took clothes off the line while they were still damp if we were going to iron them immediately. Of course, it was difficult to dry clothing in bad weather even in the summer, and in the wintertime drying clothes could take many hours. Ironing was done with flat irons that weighed about 5 lbs each. Ours were cast-iron devices forged in a foundry, and the surface for ironing was ground flat and polished smoothly. Ironing required a hot stove to heat the flat irons, and Mama used 2 or 3 irons depending on what was needed. The flat irons were heated to the desired temperature by setting them on top of the cook stove in the kitchen. The stove required lots of firewood to heat them, and I brought in the wood. Our cook stove was big, and the cook surface had 4 spots to set things on to be cooked. It was also capable of heating the entire house. That was wonderful when the outside temperature was below freezing and the wind was blowing, but it yielded a sauna most other times. In Northeast Texas, summer temperatures reached 100 oF many afternoons. But whether it was August or January, laundry had to be done, and the irons needed to be hot to put a crease into pants or iron a white shirt. The only air conditioning was the wind, and even the wind could be hot in the summer.

Ironing was not simple, and I was never allowed to handle the irons as they were dangerous to use. The difficulty started with determining whether or not the iron was hot enough to use, and there was definitely an art in making that judgment. Mama would wet a fingertip and tap the surface of the iron. If a sizzling sound was heard, the iron was hot enough to use. If the iron was too hot and she was not careful, her fingertip would burn slightly. An iron that was overly hot was cooled to prevent it from scorching the cloth. Even the handle of an iron heated up, and you couldn’t afford to risk dropping one of the things on yourself or the floor, as both would be burned. Mama used a thick potholder to keep the handle from burning her hand. If the clothes were not damp, she sprinkled water on them, and when the hot iron touched the cloth, steam was produced. It was a certainty that a hot iron would scorch the clothing if there were no water on the cloth. When the iron cooled it was exchanged for another iron that had been heated on the stove.

Washing and ironing processes took 1 to 2 days to get garments ready to be worn again. In the summer, the process was akin to working in a sauna, and in the winter we may as well have worked in a deep freeze. However, we were presentable, and we also learned yet a lesson that not every activity in life was fun, even if it were necessary. No one ever asked me if my clothes were washed by hand, and if ours were compared to clothes washed and dried in machines, our clothes smelled ultra fresh compared to those. However, no matter how good my clothes looked or smelled I never enjoyed even one minute of doing the washing or helping with the ironing, and I still don’t particularly care for either. By the time I entered my teen years I worked so much outside the home that I was no longer required to wash more than work clothes and jeans.

I have traveled in many underdeveloped countries since 1990, and most farmers in them washed, dried and ironed their clothes the way my family did in the 1940s. Perhaps my story will help us to understand why people have suffered great hardship to enter this country, legally or illegally, and perhaps it has rekindled some faded memories about the hardships our ancestors endured to raise our culture to its current status. Even if both those conditions have been met, it still won’t make me like to wash, dry and iron clothes!