It is Monday morning at grandma's house and that means only one thing, its wash day.  Oh, how we kids loved Monday mornings.  It started early, six o'clock or earlier.  Grandma got grand-daddy  off to work, and then it started.  All the dirty clothes were gathered up, beds were stripped and the rugs were taken up.  Everything was carried out to the wash house.  Grandma had heated water on the wood stove in the kitchen and carried it out to the wringer washing machine.  Now, there was a specific order the clothes were washed in, and we kids learned that early.  Although we had fun, we did our share of work.  

First, the white clothes were done, while the water was still hot and clean.  I can hear the churning of that old Maytag.  But what we loved was the wringer, and we got to help put the clothes through the wringer, after we had been properly warned about how dangerous this could be if we got our hands caught.  The whites were guided through the wringer into a huge pan of clean water.  We swished the clothes in the clean water for rinsing, then back through the wringer.  Load one was ready to go on the line.  If these were sheets or large items, the women hung them on the lines in the back yard.  If they were smaller items, hankies, undies, and such, we kids got to lower the lines and hang them up.  Of course, there was a right way and a wrong way to hang the clothes on the line, and we had to learn this, too.  

The washing continued.  Next were light colored clothes, followed by darker ones, then work clothes (grand-daddy worked at the mines), next rugs and everything else.  The process was the same for every load.  They churned in the Maytag, we fed them through the wringer, rinsed them and fed them back through the wringer, and they hit the clothes lines.  Something that started out fun soon got boring, but we were in it for the duration.  Grandma made sure we kids learned how to do things right and anything less than right would not pass her inspection.  

One day, when the clothes were almost finished, the unthinkable happened, the very thing we had been warned about, happened to me!  I got my hand caught in the wringer!  I screamed and the chaos began!  My mom and aunts were running to get to me, and I thought I would go through life without my arm!  My sister and cousin ran out the door crying and screaming.  I just knew the end was near for me.  Meanwhile, grandma was standing close by.  With her usual calm, she flipped the leaver and the wringer stopped, my hand hardly got into the wringer at all.  My arm and my life were saved, by grandma!  I had a future with two arms thanks to grandma.

Since both my hands and arms were working well, the wringer was turned back on and the clothes washing continued.  While the laundry dried outside on the clothes lines, we went about cleaning the wash house.  The water was empted out of the Maytag by a hose than ran out the wash house and into the ditch behind the building.  All the tubs were emptied and washed with hot, clean water.  Cleanliness is next to Godliness, my grandma coined that phrase, you know.  Everything had a place and she made sure it was put back in its place.  We then swept and mopped the floor.  Grandma's wash house was as clean as her house, she would have it no other way.  

After the wash house was clean again, we waited for the laundry to dry, then we got to help take it off the lines.  We had to shake every piece we took off the lines to be sure there were no bugs on them, then fold very carefully every piece.  No matter that everything got ironed, it still got folded perfectly and loaded into baskets and carried into the house.  Wash day was done -or was it?

Of course grandma ironed every piece of laundry, and she saw to it that we girls knew how to properly iron clothes, to her specifications.  Wash day continued - and ironing is another story for another day.