Writing about the whole wash day experience when I was a little girl brought to mind the only time I was on a talk radio program. Yep, that’s right. As a litte kid I was actually on talk radio or at least what I think was talk radio.
It was a Monday. I know that because my mother was doing the laundry. (no need for calendars!) I was about 5 years old and it was the good old summertime. I grew up in Pennsylvania and windows were always open in the summer. My mother and I were outside, she was hanging laundry and I was playing. The telephone began to ring and in those day the ringers were very loud. I don’t know if my mother told me to or I decided on my own but I ran in the house to answer it. When I picked up the phone there was a kind of an echo. Funny how I can still remember it but I do. The lady on the phone said “Hello! This is Dialing for Dollars!” (not exactly the Rush Limbaugh Show, but hey!) Our local radio station had a program where they would select numbers from the phone book, call and ask a question. If you answered the question correctly you won some prize. I was 5 years old and didn’t care about the question or the prize. I wanted to talk. And the echo I mentioned earlier was because our radio was playing in the background. My mother kept asking who was on the phone and I just kept trying to talk. Finally she came in the house and took the phone from me. I have no idea if she won the prize but I do remember getting a scolding. But that’s how some talk radio used to work – they called you not the other way around.
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I got up this morning knowing I had a great deal of laundry to do. So I gathered it up, separated my colors from my whites (some things should never change) and put my first load in my automatic washing machine. Now I know washing machines as we know them today have been around for a long time. But when I was a little girl, doing laundry was a lot different.
My mother’s laundry day was Monday. This meant every Monday was devoted entirely to getting the clothes washed. The only other thing that was done on wash day was meals were prepared. The reason for this was the enormity of the task. There were 4 children in my family plus 2 adults- that meant a lot of clothes. Now we didn’t wear our clothes like we do today, sometimes we wore things two days in a row if they weren’t that dirty but it was still a whole weeks worth of laundry.
A typical wash day, as Mondays were called, started the same as mine did today. Gather the clothes, sheets, towels, rugs, etc and separate them into loads. Then they were carried to the basement or cellar and the process began. And it was a process. The first load of laundry was put in the washer which was filled with water. This filling meant a hose was connected to a faucet and hot water was run into the drum of the washer (nothing automatic here). Once it was filled you plugged it in, turned it on and it began to agitate. Agitation in washing machines is still the process but what happened next hopefully is gone forever. The agitation was stopped and the wringer was put into action. This was a device that was attached to the washer above the drum. It consisted of 2 rollers that you fed the wet soapy clothes through thereby wringing the water from them. The soapy water went back into the washer and the clothes went into a rinse tub. My mother would then swish the clothes around in it and then put them through the wringer again into a second rinse tub. Swish the clothes to rinse, through the wringer and finally into a laundry basket. Several loads were washed and rinsed before the water was changed out if it even was. Conservation was being practiced unconsiously, I guess.
Since every step required my mother’s attention only one batch was done at a time. We’re talking time consuming! The laundry in the basket was then taken to the clothes line to be hung up. In the spring, summer, and fall that was outside strung between 2 clothes line poles. Winter meant clothes were hung to dry on lines strung up inside in the basement. The clothes pin was the device used to hang the wet laundry. The loads were rotated off the line as they dried and more hung up. When the towels, sheets, and rugs were taken down they were put back into service.
The clothing was another matter. It required ironing (which was another day’s work) so it needed a bit of preparation. They were sprinkled with water, rolled up, and put in a bag in the refrigerator. Supposedly this allowed them to be more easily ironed. Once the laundry was washed the washing machine and rinse tubs needed to be drained, wiped down so they would be ready for next Monday.
Presently a wringer washer is made in Saudia Arabia. It can be purchased from www.lehmans.com for $899 with $175 freight. Now I personally am glad that all I have to do is go change out my laundry from my automatic washer to my automatic dryer! I’ve already done a few loads while I’ve been writing this.
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