Column: Rosalie Albers, Washington Avenue

One day last month I drove from Bricelyn to Wells, 15 miles away, to use the commercial laundromat to wash some heavy, oversize laundry. I have a washer and dryer, but this seemed like a more efficient way to go, considering time and energy.

As I waited for the laundry to get done, I started to remember “wash day” when I was growing up always being on Monday. The Maytag Wringer Washing Machine was in the pumphouse across the farmyard and down by the barn. One of the men from the household would go out early in the morning to light a wood fire under the large cast-iron boiler, which was filled with 50 or 60 gallons of water so it would be hot when the women were ready to start washing clothes.

Before starting, the washing machine and two galvanized tubs used for rinsing the clothes were set up, one filled with warm water for colored clothing and the other with cold water and Mrs. Stewart’s Liquid Bluing added for the white clothes. When everything was in place a five-gallon galvanized pail was used to fill the tubs and washing machine, homemade soap was shaved off a large slab of the soap that was made every fall from rendered fat and lye to be used as laundry detergent

Laundry was an all-day chore from start to finish, and the wringer washer could be dangerous. I remember my grandmother, aunt and mother at one time or the other getting a hand tangled in a sheet or Long John underwear that was being fed through the wringer and their hand going in also. There was a brake on the machine’s arm that you were to slap to pop the rollers apart, imagine trying to do that with one hand while the other one was going through the rollers. In spite of that precaution, there were flattened fingers, broken fingers or hands and, once, even stitches.

The dryer was the outside clotheslines. They were strung behind the house on sturdy wooden poles, and in summer the smell of freshly laundered and air dried sheets was a pleasant way to go to sleep. In winter the clothes were draped on wooden clothes racks in the house. These racks were made of a lightweight wood and folded flat when not in use. They opened up like an A-frame with several more rods placed down each side to hold the items that needed to dry. This could take more than one day in front of the oil burning stove. Sometimes the Long Johns were hung outside in cold and would be brought in the house frozen stiff to finish drying one of my brothers believes this was done on purpose so they would be hard and scratchy when you put them on.

When we moved to our own house, my mother had her washing machine in the basement with the same set up of tubs and machine, but she had running water and a hose to fill hers with. The clothes were still dried in the same way, lugging heavy laundry baskets of wet clothing up the basement steps and to the outdoor clotheslines. Eventually she got a gas dryer and thought she had landed in the lap of luxury, though on beautiful summer days the sheets were still hung outside.

Today we have automatic washers and dryers in our homes. We wash and dry as little or as much laundry as we need at a time. We leave the machines unattended and go on to other things we have to do. In the time it has taken me to write my first draft of this story, the two large heavy loads of laundry are washed and dried in approximately 45 minutes and I can get on with the rest of my day. There is no way I would want to go back to those “good old Monday laundry days,” although air dried sheets are still the best way to go to sleep at night.

Rosalie L. Albers is member of the Washington Avenue Writers Group.