Household Hints & Help

Growing up in the rural south in the '40s, I helped my grandparents on wash days. Three ten-gallon tubs lined up along the outside wall of the smoke-house, with my grandmother, sleeves rolled up, bent over the first scrubbing tub, using the lye soap she had made and her washboard. Then came two rinses in the other two tubs.

Somewhere in that process all the sheets and other "whites" went into the big cast iron pot of boiling water over the wood fire that my grandfather tended. He had a long paddle or stick that he used to stir, and to lift them out of the water when they were boiled clean and white enough to suit him, then into one of the washtubs.

I don't remember him using any lemon juice, though. In fact, I don't even rememer how it was I "helped".

When my aunt was home she provided the entertainment and encouragemrnent, belting out songs like "Pistol Packing Mama", "Oklahoma Hills Where I Was Born", and "Cocaine" (Early one morning while making my rounds, I grabbed a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down...) made famous again much later by Johnny Cash in his Folsom Prison album. I may have those song titles wrong, but still remember the lyrics! Washday songs, probably helped make the whites even whiter.

Sorry to get so far from the subject.

Wat