South Florida 1931: Wash Day

     Greetings, All -- As the nursery rhyme goes:  "This is the way we wash our clothes. . .so early Monday morning," so went our lives as the Great Depression gained momentum.  Fortunately, our dad's work was secure.  The household routine continued.  The Mockingbirds kept on singing in our yard.

     Hattie, our no-nonsense African-American housekeeper went to the backyard to start doing the laundry while Mother collected the dirty clothes and bed linens.  My little brother and I helped Hattie by carrying 18-inch quarter-splits of fat yellow pine from the wood pile to the fire pits.  A fire to heat water was necessary because our "solar system" did not have adequate capacity for laundry.

     Two dug pits side by side were each partly ringed by fire-blackened coral rocks.  We put crinkled-up newspaper into the pits and covered it with kindling wood.  Then came the sought-after ritual of striking the match and lighting the fire.  When it was burning briskly, we laid pine logs on it, then placed two fire-blackened galvanized steel laundry tubs on the pits.  An opening in the front of each ring allowed the fire to be fed after tubs were in place.

     We quickly added water to the tubs.   Each tub had a capacity of about 15 gallons.  We never completely filled them, of course, because laundry would be added.  Hattie measured the right amount of soap flakes out of a cardboard box into one of them. We did not know how to do that.

     Hattie and Mother selected the right things to wash, white first, of course.  The laundry within the soapy washing tub was agitated manually using a stout wooden hoe handle.  Laundry was lifted up out of the bubbling hot water and dropped back the right number of times.  We never knew how many to do.

     After the "wash cycle," the same tool was used to lift and transfer too-hot-to-handle laundry into the adjacent clean water rinse tub.  The same agitation was applied to ensure that the clean clothes were well rinsed.  When we behaved, we were allowed to manipulate the hoe handle and to feed the fire.

     The next step was to lift rinsed items with the hoe handle and, while they were still very hot, drape them over a galvanized wire clothes line.  One end of each of three wires was attached to the grapefruit tree and the other to a vertical post fitted with a crossbar and well set into the ground.  The laundry was spread on the wires and secured by wooden clothes pins fitted with wire springs.

     The Florida sun made quick work of drying.  We helped take the dry laundry it into the house to be ironed the next day.  The tubs were emptied into the backyard and stacked in the garage until next week.  In later years we sent the flat work to the laundry.  Of course, there came a time after World War II when magical appliances such as clothes washers, mangles and dryers eased the tasks of the housekeepers of America and the world.  But, when we were little, hat was Monday.

     Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder