Laundry time at the new place.

Always before doing the laundry had consisted of scrubbing clothes on the scrub board, wringing them out by twisting them and then dropping them into a tub of rinse water where they were swished around by hand, wrung out again and dropped into another tub of water.  A final wringing and then they were placed on a wire "clothes line" to dry.  It was an all day job!  But when we moved in here we were surprised to find that it came with a washing machine.  As I recall it had a gas motor and sat in the kitchen.  The tank on the motor was probably coal oil.  Maybe kerosene.  Maybe gas. The motor caused the agitator to go back and forth, thus beating the clothes clean and eliminating the need for the scrub board.  Mother did, however, pre scrub the collars of the shirts on the scrub board.  We must have been very dirty little kids, especially our necks.
This new washer was great!  It even had a "wringer" which was two rollers and you turned a crank and placed and item of clothes between the rollers and the water ran back into the washer.  This was wonderful and made Mother's work so easy!  But alas!  It had been left there for a reason.  The second time the laundry was done the motor gave out and could not be repaired.  The rollers did not do a good job of wringing.

So, Mr. Reuben Floyd Bartholomew, land owner went into town and opened a charge account and purchased a brand new, never used, white  washing machine for his wife.  That was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.  And it was electric!  It plugged into the one plug in that was in the kitchen.  (More about the wonders of electricity later!)  The best part was the stop lever on the wringer.  If you got your fingers in there by accident, you could smack the lever with your free hand and the wringers would stop and open allowing you to retrieve your appendage.  The alternative was to be pulled through the wringer and spit out in the rinse tub!  So wash day now became a joy!

Water would be heated in the 3 legged kettle out back with a wood fire and carried in by buckets to fill the washing machine.  Cold water was carried for the rinse tubs.  The final rinse always had a dab of "bluing" added so the white clothes had a hint of blue instead of the drab gray of the women who did not use bluing.  The first load of clothes washed was always "the whites". The whites were placed on the clothes line to dry and life continued.

 Oh, forgot to tell you the very first thing that happened was the bar of lye soap was grated into the water and agitated until it dissolved.  I must elaborate on how the lye soap came to be.
 When the lye soap supply started getting low, the first step was to clean the ash bin of the stove out and build a fire with a certain kind of wood.  The wood was important as it affected the color, smell, and texture of the soap.  This ash was saved for "soap making day".  On soap making day the 5 gallon bucket of grease we had been saving for this occasion was carefully heated and strained into another clean can.  Only the top was used as the bottom contained water and lord only knows what else.  This was placed on the back of the stove to be kept warm. Mother would place the ashes in a colander lined with several layers of cheese cloth. She then carefully dropped water into the ashes which ran through and was caught in a vessel of some sort underneath the sieve.  When she thought it looked "right" she would place a raw egg still in its shell in the mixture.  As I recall when all was right the egg would do something "proving" the lye.  When that happened there was a flurry in that kitchen like you would not believe!

The kettle of warm grease was set on the floor, someone poured the lye into the grease can while mother stirred frantically with a hammer handle reserved for this purpose only.  Depending on the strength of the lye, the heat of the grease and the humidity of the air the grease would start to "trace" means to  show marks of the hammer handle.  When the trace marks showed the concoction was poured into a wooden box that was lined with cloth.  If any part of the procedure was not perfect two things would happen.  If the mixture did not trace, then lye was off and the whole thing a waste and had to be thrown out.  If it traced to quickly it would set up on the way to the mold.  Usually the hammer handle would be trapped in the soap and could not be retrieved until the soap was all grated.  But if everything was perfect and the grease extra clean we would end up with white soap that actually lathered.  Back then a woman's worth was often connected to that bar of soap she produced, and to her credit, my mother rarely failed!

That scenario is what went through my mind when Chuck Vail gave me a gift certificate to Vitamin Cottage and I saw a book on soap making.  I figured if my mother could do it under the primitive conditions she did it under that I could surely turn out a bar to be proud of and that is what I have done.  Sadly nobody ever asks me what my soap looks like, but I think I will show you anyway.  The best part is what this does for my skin. See, this stuff is made with all natural ingredients so rather than plugging up my pores with petroleum distillates, it opens them and keeps my skin young.  I have a lot of repeat customers for this soap and my lotions.  Just goes to show, that no matter how things change, the more they remain the same.  When I first started making soap I could buy lye at the grocery store, but then the druggies learned how to use it and embalming fluid to make drugs and it is no longer available.  I have to order it online and I am limited how much I can buy and I have to certify that I am not a drug lord.

So while my mother made her own lye and used grease and it was a crap shoot what she would end up with, I have controlled conditions and it always comes out the same.  I use pretty molds and package it for eye appeal.  I keep thinking maybe one of my kids will take up the banner when I can no longer do this, but none of them are showing any interest.  Guess it is what is known as a dying art.  Much as my life has become!  When I take flight for the big homestead in the sky there will be a bunch of kids standing around shaking thier heads and wondering what to do with all the kettles, thermometers, molds, bags, fragrances, oils.  Ah!  An estate auction to die for!!

Back to Nickerson.

For those of you who do not know, this is an iron.  Does not even faintly resemble the Rowenta that sets in my sewing room and give me a burst of steam when I want it.  In our kitchen in Nickerson, was a very big wood cook stove.  It was made of cast iron and burned wood as the fuel source.  It had a tank we kept full of water which came in handy for dish washing and all kinds of stuff.  It was probably 3' by 2 1/2' and had an oven on the bottom part.  That never made sense to me since heat rises, but that is how I remember it.  The cooking area had several lids that could be lifted off to put more wood in when needed.  It had a shelf above where momma kept the salt, pepper, sugar, and a grease can.  The grease can was aluminum and after frying something, the excess grease was poured in there.  It had a strainer in the top to keep out the crumbs.  We used the grease over and over until it became "rancid".  Can you believe that? 
This was not our only source of heat for cooking.  We also had a small stove with four burners that was powered by either butane or propane.  This was used in case of an emergency.  An emergency usually meant we had run out of wood for one reason or another.  Since it was Jake's job to keep the wood pile chopped into manageable size logs, it was most always his fault!  The "good" stove was also used for frying chicken on Sunday.  I think that was because we were not supposed to work on Sunday.  It was a day of rest.  Cooking on the "good" stove was always fun.  Jake and I did that.  Oh, we fried the chicken and boiled the potatoes and I am sure momma made the gravy, although I learned how from some where! 
We did not attend a formal church until I was in seventh grade.  That was when momma got her cancer and had to have a hysterectomy.  The ladies from the church brought us food and made our dresses for school that fall.  Then we started attending the Christian Church up on Main Street between the school and the doctors office.  More about that later.
Back to the kitchen.  The water source was a hand pump and below it was mounted a sink with a pipe that run out the wall into the back yard for drainage.  The health department's of today would have had an absolute stroke when they say the Muscovy ducks playing in the water hole back there.  I am sure in this day and age, looking back on the living conditions, they would have been described as "squalor".  However, I want to go on record right now and tell you that those were the happiest days of my life and I would not trade one minute of them for all the tea in China! 
(That is what we used to say when we really liked something.  We knew if we had all the tea in China we would be very rich and to not trade something for all the tea in China was the highest compliment we could make.)
In the center of the kitchen sat the "wringer washer."  It was called that, because that is what it was.  When we moved in momma had one that had a gasoline motor, but later she got the electric one with the safety feature on the wringer that if you got your hand caught in it and it was going to rip your arm off, you hit the lever on top and it popped open.  The wringer was used to run the clothes through to "wring" the water out of them.  Otherwise, we had to twist them by hand to get it out.  So when wash day came (and if I looked at the tea towels, I would know what day it was, but it seems like it was Monday) we drug the "wash boiler" down from the hook and set it on the stove.  Water was heated on the wood stove in the winter.  Summer was different.  We also had a "three legged"  cast iron kettle in the yard.  We pumped water into buckets and carried it to the kettle where the fire was blazing merrily and began to heat the water.  Again Jake was expected to tend the fire, which meant feeding the fire god logs.    Since we were extra clean, we had two rinse tubs.  These had to be cold water.  In the last rinse tub went just a tiny bit of "bluing" which gave the white clothes the hint of blue which made them appear more white.
But the most important part was the soap.  Tell you where we got our soap.  In the corner of the kitchen set a metal bucket.  In that bucket went all the grease that we did not use for other things.  When it was half full it was strained into a clean metal bucket.  When the time was right, momma dripped water through pure wood ashes and made her own lye.  This was poured into the warm grease and stirred vigorously  with a hammer handle until it began to "trace".  At the first sign of "trace" (which you actually have to see to know what it is) it was poured into a wooden box lined with an old tea towel.  This process was a definite art.  I have seen the soap set up on the way to the box and the hammer handle remain in the mass until all the soap had been grated and it was free at last.  This lye soap varied in color from dark tan to pure white.  The pure white meant that every thing had gone just right and it was perfect. 
Mother was a pioneer woman that I have learned to appreciate more the last 30 years of my life than I ever did before.  I make my own soap now with commercial lye that is called "sodium hydroxide" because the first time I listed "lye" as an ingredient my customers were afraid of it.  And I can not buy it at the store anymore.  I have to order it online and sign all kinds of affidavits that I will not be making "meth" with it.  Phshaw!
I have no doubt repeated myself today and told you things I have already told you on this blog, but I will try to do better next time.  It is just that my childhood was so important to making me who I am today, that I want everyone to know about it.  I left home when I was 18 and was so happy to escape those early years and move on to bigger and better things.  When I turned 50  I decided that I should rethink my childhood and I have become more fulfilled than ever and I want  the whole world to know that the values that were instilled in me at my mother's knee are the driving force behind the woman I have become.  Makes me sad to think what I could have accomplished on this earth if I  had pulled my head out of my ass way back then.