Laundry

As we plug through the week's laundry, it occurs to me that I should tell the infants in the family how laundry used to be done. My memory of it starts with a galvanized tub in the basement, next to a "scrubbing board," which was a wooden-framed piece of corrugated glass, about like a picture frame, that was used to rub the clothing against, to work on tough stains.
     Next came the ringer washer:  Its tub could turn automatically, but the clothing had to be lifted out piece by piece and squeezed through the ringer, which was comprised of  two rubber rods, each the diameter of a rolling pin, set close together, and turned by a crank. You'd turn the crank and feed the clothing through the ringer to squeeze the water out. You started out washing the whites, followed by the darks, so that you could re-use the water without having colors make the white turn gray.
     Clothing was washed in soap; it was a few years before detergent came on the market. Boraxo was used to enhance the wash water--I think that was it's purpose. Everybody knew the brand "Twenty Mule Team Borax," and if you drive across the Mojave between California and Arizona today, you can see signs steering you to the historical site where the borax was mined. Also, you used bleach. 
     A bottle of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing was next to the tub, and a dash would make the whites look whiter, I guess by coloring them slightly blue. After washing, all the clothing had to be carried outside to hang on a rope clothesline, attached with clothes pins. They were either a simple piece of dowel turned to have a slight cap, and with a split in them to force fabric and clothesline together with friction; or else the modern ones were spring loaded to pinch fabric to the clothesline.
     I remember Milly pointing to Pappy Eli's long johns and nightcap  waving on the clothesline, and laughing.  The night cap was a woolen stocking cap to keep his bald head warm while he slept. The only other place I've ever seen one is in the illustrations for Clement Moore's " A Visit from Saint Nicholas" ("T'was the night before Christmas, and all through the house... I in my nightgown and Ma in her cap/had just settled down for a long winter's nap....")
     When Uncle John began selling fully automatic washers at his Western Auto store, they had a spin cycle (no ringer). Vake and Milly got one, and with the two youngest kids in diapers at the same time (no disposables then, cotton diapers got washed), it got a lot of use. However, it tended to throw the clothing off-sides, and the whole machine would start to shake, then romp around the laundry room' until somebody came running to straighten  out the load.
     Next came the electric dryer. It vented to the outdoors, and on cold days, a cloud of steam emanated from the house. Milly was irked when the neighbor, Mrs. Sheets, saw the cloud and knocked on the door to make sure Mark hadn't set the house on fire.  There was no reason to think he was a bad kid.
     Even after she got an electric dryer, Milly preferred to dry sheets outdoors, on a clothes line. Hanging them up, then taking them down again, was tedious and boring, but I have to admit that a cotton sheet, dried in clean air and sunshine, smells wonderful.