Wash Day

 

 

            Angry clouds loomed above the Matheson Cove in 1930.  Ma Minnie Ledford urged her daughters to help with the laundry before the afternoon storm stuck.

            “Let’s go to the creek, girls,” said Ma Minnie.  “It’s wash day and we need to get the laundry done before an afternoon storm pounds the cove.”

            “I don’t want to wash clothes,” said Robenia and flipped flaming red hair from her freckled face.  She played forward on the basketball team in the old rock gym at Hayesville High School.  She lived, breathed, and savored basketball.  The school was having a break for spring planting in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

            “Look, here, Beanie,” said Ma.  “There’s more to life than basketball.”

            Robenia pouted and ambled to the spring with Reba and Rena.  Robins landed in the yard and spread an orange blanket on verdant grass.  Jonquils dotted the woodland trail and perfumed the Matheson Cove.  Cattle bawled in the pasture.

            Pa, Rondy, Ralph, Robert, and Ray were planting corn seed in the field.  They raised corn to feed the family and livestock.  When they harvested the crop, the boys took tow sacks of grain to the mill to grind into cornmeal.

            Rena pointed to the field.  “Why don’t the boys help us wash?  That’s not fair.  They get out of doing the hard work.”

            Ma ignored Rena and wiped sweat from her brow as she built a fire.  An iron pot hung over the fire.  She would boil the clothes after they washed them in a tub of soapy water.  After the clothes boiled, they rinsed them in a tub of fresh water.

            Ma and the girls dipped the clothes that needed to be ironed into a bucket of starch before hanging them on the line.

            “Well, we’re finished with the washing,” said Ma.  “Thanks girls.  Let’s go to the house and fix supper for Pa and the boys.”

            After a hardy meal of leather breeches, fried Irish potatoes, cornbread, buttermilk, and custard pie, the girls got the clothes off the line.  They sprinkled the garments with water and wrapped them in a towel to stay damp.  Dry cotton would not iron well.  Tomorrow they would spend most of the day ironing.

            Irons were heated on top of the woodstove or in the fireplace.  They had to be careful and wipe off any ashes that got on the iron. 

            Wash day and ironing took a lot of time and work.  But Ma Minnie Ledford wanted her family to be clean.  The Great Depression would take away her dignity.  After all cleanliness was next to godliness.