The Rural Voice, 2005-11, Page 30REMEMBERING WASHDAY
The wringer washer was a great step forward,
though it mag semi archaic today. In the 1940s
and 1950s Monday washday was just part of the
weekly cgcle of household chores.
By Barbara Weller
WASHDAY
They that wash on Monday have all
the week to dry;
They that wash on Tuesday have not
so much awry;
They that wash on Wednesday have
not so much to blame;
They that wash on Thursday wash
for shame;
They that wash on Friday wash in
need;
And they that wash on Saturday, oh,
they are slow indeed.
Mother Goose
Monday was always washday
in the "olden days". It was
not a day I looked forward
to, though by the mid -1940s my
mother had acquired a magnificent
electric wringer washing machine.
I suppose one would have to be
acquainted with doing laundry using
26 THE RURAL VOICE
a large galvanized tub and a scrub
board to really appreciate the wonder
of this machine. The wringer
mechanism was certainly far superior
to squeezing the water out of sheets,
towels and denim work pants by
hand. My Internet tells me that even
the scrub board wasn't invented until
1797 — before that they pounded the
clothes on rocks in the stream,
provided there was a stream nearby!
Between that and my mother's
electric machine there were many
inventions to make washday easier.
When our family first acquired
this superb appliance, there was no
running water in our farmhouse and
no hot water heater either. The
washer had to be filled by hand. The
hot water from the tank on the wood
stove was scooped into the tub of the
washer. More water was pumped
from the cistern with the hand pump,
heated in the kettle and added to the
machine until the water reached the
desired level. The same water was
used for all the clothing to be
washed.
Okay, when the washer was full,
and the soap added, we could begin.
We sorted the clothes from white and
lightly soiled clothes to dark and
heavily soiled just as we do today.
The first load included my father's
white Sunday shirt and the last, his
farm overalls, encrusted with manure
and soil. Each load was allowed a
certain amount of time to gyrate,
depending on degree of dirtiness,
before the clothes were literally "put
through the wringer" into a tub of
warm clear water for rinsing.
That wringer was of great concern
to my mother. There were horror
stories about people who got their
arms caught between the rollers or
were pulled into it by some hanging
tie or fluttering sleeve when doing
laundry. "Be sure you keep your
fingers well away from the wringer,"
my mother constantly reminded us
when we were old enough to help
with the laundry.
The rinsed garments made the
return trip through the rollers to
squeeze out the rinse water, and then
were placed in the laundry basket
ready for their journey to the clothes
line, there to be carefully pinned in
place in neat categories, all the sheets
in a row, etc. because how the
laundry looked on the line was a
great source of pride to the
housewife. If a lady had no wash on
the line on a fine sunny Monday,