Emancipated Mama

I remember when my mama bought
Her first washing machine.
As our farm was not electrified,
It was powered by gasoline.
Before that time her washday
Was mighty, mighty hard.
She had to boil the sheets and towels
And scrub them on the board.
I looked at that contraption,
Strangest thing I'd ever seen,
And had no comprehension
How it would get our laundry clean.
First, Daddy must carry water
That he pumped from the barn well
And pour it into the boiler
On the stove, to heat a spell.
Then Mama broke the water
By pouring in a dollop
Of lye to break the minerals up
And bring them to the top.
She had a special dipper
That she used to skim the stuff.
She captured every bit before
She thought it good enough.
My mama used a bucket to
Transfer water to machine
And pared a cake of P & G
For suds to get clothes clean.
That machine began to rumble
And to shimmy and to shake.
It sounded like Dad's tractor
And the noise that it could make.
While they washed, I noticed Mama
Was tying up her waist length hair.
She said a lady had been scalped
Because she hadn't taken care
When running the new wringer
Of just such a machine.
I thought that a high price to pay
To get your work clothes clean.
She used a strong, long stick to poke
Her clean clothes through the wringer
And hummed a song just like she did
When using treadle Singer.
When she had washed all of the whites
She put in the colored clothes,
With overalls from sons and Dad
There sure were lots of those.
Each batch needed to be rinsed
And then wrung out again;
But all the time my mama worked
She never lost her grin.
She emptied the washer with a bucket
And carried it outside
Pouring the water on her garden
Which had looked a little dried.
She could throw away her washboard,
She no longer had to scrub,
For the washer did the hard work
With its magic rub-a-dub.
With the wringer wringing heavy clothes
She used to have to wrench,
Mama said with her new helpers
Washday really was a cinch.

By: Joyce 1/14/08