Keeping clothes clean for three boys and my Mother and Daddy and Grandmother was quite a chore when it all had to be done in a primitive way. Very early in the morning on wash day, we pumped water into a full 25-gallon black wash pot where my Daddy would build a fire around the pot. As soon as the water got hot, we filled two wash tubs and sat them on the wash bench. Another tub had cold water for the rinsing and we put the rub board in the tub of hot water.
The only soap I ever used until almost grown was “lye” soap—homemade soap crafted in the wash pot with lye, which had to be “Red Devil” lye. This soap was used for bathing, washing, and any soap needs in the family. It had quite a smell, and not a good one.
After my Mother had rubbed the clothes on the rub board in the hot water, she would put them in the rinsing side. The rinsing water had a coloring we referred to as “blueing” where the water would look sky blue. After we got through washing and hanging the clothes on the line, we would have our baths, where Mother would put us boys in the tub that carried the color of the sky.
To get a twelve or thirteen-year-old in a number two washtub was quite a chore. Our old house sat near the little gravel and dirt road where a tree offered little shield from the few passerbys. We were so embarrassed. We would try to duck down when a car passed since out in the country we could tell who was coming by the sound of their car. This bathing practice kept up until we rebelled at fourteen and started heating our water in the sun in a tub behind the house where we could hide.
Bathing was at best in a washpan that held about a half-gallon of water. Later on, as times got better, we heated the water on the stove. We would take a pan of cold water and set it on the back door steps and wash our feet and often remark that we “washed up as far as possible and down as far as possible, but ‘possible’ only got washed about once a week.”