Grandma Gets A Washing Machine

Grandma Gets A Washing Machine

I had one chore as a yonkler that I could not get out of, no matter how hard I tried. Every Monday morning, along about daybreak, I had to start hauling buckets of water from the spring and fill the wash pot and the washtubs. Then I had to chop kindling and build a fire under the big old wash pot so’ as Grandma Estelle could boil the clothes. In that same wash pot, every fall at hog butchering time, she would render down some hog fat and mix it with ashes to make lye soap. I took a many a Saturday bath with that soap and it would pert near burn the eyes right out of your head. Grandma would be bent over that kettle scrubbing the clothes on a washboard and then she would rinse them in the smaller tubs. Finally she would sling the clothes around this old cedar post and wring them to hang out to dry. This was a weekly occurrence and there was just no getting around that chore. It was just hanging there... every Monday. Then one year we had an especially good crop. The most cash money came into the house that we had seen in awhile. To top it off, the price of hogs went sky high and we were doing better than I could remember. It looked an awful lot like I was going to get a pair of shoes this fall and that would sure make going to school easier when the ground was hard frozen. Grandma was walking around humming a lot and she smiled more than she had in the past 4 years. Her and Grandpa Kader went to the town of Selma one Saturday morning and that afternoon here come the truck from the Selma Hardware store. Mister Abdollar and his helper, a big black man named jumbo, unloaded a brand spanking new Maytag washing machine and put it on the back porch. He showed my grandma how to use the washer and just as he was leaving he told her. "Now, when ya'll get your electricity, you let me know and I will come on back and put in an electric motor for you. That is just the way it happened. That Maytag had a gasoline motor in it and I sure grew to love the sound of that motor every Monday morning. That same Maytag washing machine is in my shop right now and runs as good as the day it was placed on Grandma's back porch.