Washing Clothes

I LOVED washing clothes with Grandma and Papa T. They had this really cool machine in their garage where they washed clothes. Papa would plug it in and it would literally sputter to life. Before that, though, we would spend a long time filling all the tubs from the green water hose, separating all the clothes—you start with lights and move to darks—and clearing the clothes lines of spiders and bugs so that we could hang the clothes out.

Once the first load was dumped in the first agitator the excitement began. We would leave those clothes in for a set period of time and then Papa would start wringing them out. You had to do it “just so” so that buttons and clasps and zippers didn’t get stuck (or fingers or hands for that matter). If they did, Grandma would run to unplug the machine while Papa coaxed the clothes out. Sometimes a button would just POP off and fly around in the garage. Since I was little and didn’t care about crawling around on the dirty ground, I would be in charge of trying to locate the lost button to see if it was salvageable.

Clothes would pile up on the tables in between the tubs and then be dunked again in another agitator or rinse tub through the wringer again and then into the still rinse tubs (the big silver metal wash tubs).

Finally, though, my turn to shine came on. I was the skimmer on the final rinse tub. I had an old teaspoon that was kept out there for the express purpose of using to skim off the soap bubbles. I felt so important doing my job of soap skimmer. If I wasn’t there to do it, then someone else would have to (and Grandma and Papa were way too busy to) or the clothes would never be pure of soap.

When a load was finally finished, I got to go help Grandma hang the clothes. My job was to get the wooden clothes pins and hand to her as she hung everything up. I was always impressed at how one clothes pin would hold the edges of two pieces of clothes. That was really cool. You wanted a windy day to dry your clothes so they wouldn’t be so stiff—but you took any day that wasn’t rainy. No matter, line-dried clothes always smelled like the sun and that was worth a few inconveniences.

I still love washing clothes even though my machines aren’t nearly as interactive or exciting as the ones Grandma and Papa used. They are convenient, though, and I don’t have to use scratchy towels, but I do miss smelling the sun first thing in the morning.