Monday is wash day. Everybody knows that. It always has been. I remember, when I was little during the Great Depression of the 30's, what it was like for Mother. Dad didn't help. After all, it was woman's work. I was too young to help, but I did watch. This is what I remember.

Mother had a copper boiler. I haven't seen one in years. She carried pails of water from the well out in the yard. There was a windmill, but that only worked if the wind was blowing. It took several trips to fill that boiler. Oh yes, she made sure there was a good strong fire going in our old cook stove in the kitchen. It made no difference, winter or summer, that boiler had to be heated. We didn't have electricity, indoor plumbing or a hot water heater. We had Mother's strong back and her willingness to get the job done.

While the water was heating, Mother sorted clothes. My school clothes could stand the wear and tear of being scrubbed on a washboard. Even my long brown cotton stockings found their way into Mother's wash tub. I remember Dad wearing denim bib overalls. A blue chambray shirt went with it. Any colored clothes had to be washed separately. After all, colors do run. Who wants pink long-johns? Mother sorted clothes religiously.

I don't remember soap flakes. Mother would shave a bar of brown Fels Naptha soap into the wash tub she had set out in the yard in the summertime. The least soiled clothes went first. Mother would scrub them on a corrugated scrub board until clean. They were wrung out by hand and placed to rinse in a cold water filled tub. She also filled that tub with water carried from the well.

Mother again refilled the copper boiler and added more wood to the stove. While that was heating, she wrung out the clothes from the rinse water, by hand again, put them in a basket and carried them to the clothes line. Mother fastened each garment to the line with clothes pins. (Today the only use for wooden clothes pins is in crafts.) Since everything had to be ironed, she pinned them carefully. There was an art to it. This process continued until she had all the clothes washed and hung out to dry. When the clothes line was full, Mother hung the remainder over the fence by the swamp.

After dumping the dirty water, Mother refilled the tubs and put the most soiled garments over to soak in hot water. She was not done. The “whites” had to be boiled in Fels Naptha soap. Mother had no bleach. She used a clothes stick to snag each piece from the boiling water to be scrubbed in that same tub out in the yard. There were no Kleenex tissues, just cotton handkerchiefs.

Cold weather found Mother doing the process in the kitchen. She still had to carry water from the well to the house, dump the dirty water outside and carry the wet clothes to the line in the yard..

Nowadays, I put the garments in the washer, add liquid soap, select length of wash cycle, number of rinses, push the start button and sit down to watch TV. My, times have changed.