Dale had mastered the art of wash day. She sorted the items from our hampers into three piles—whites, coloreds, and work clothes. The whites went into the first tub where they were soaked for a while, gently scrubbed on a rub board, and then carried to the wash pot and boiled while she worked on the colored clothes.

The whites were removed very carefully from the boiling water with a broom handle and carried to the second tub on the sawhorses where they were rinsed and transferred to the third tub of bluing water.

My sister and I were too busy playing with Dale’s girls to pay much attention to what she was doing, but we were allowed to keep the fire stoked under the wash pot and to hand her the clothes from the piles as she needed them. When the whites had soaked for a while in the bluing water to whiten them, we were allowed to help hang them on the clothesline holding them in place with wooden clothespins and being careful to space them so that there would be room left for the colored clothes.

The colored clothes, meanwhile, had been soaking in the first tub. They were scrubbed on the rub board, boiled in the wash pot, and transferred to the rinse water. We then were allowed to hang them on the clotheslines with the white clothes.

The work clothes followed the same pattern with the exception of the trip to the clothesline. Usually the white and coloreds had filled the clothesline, and the work clothes (usually denim and khaki) were hung on the fence surrounding the yard.

After the wash was completed, Dale stripped us all and gave us a good bath in the wash water—her girls in the rinse water and my sister and me in the bluing tub.

We were filthy from playing around the ashes at the wash pot and around the tubs all morning. She then carried all the water, bucketful by bucketful, to the garden for irrigation. Water was scarce and nothing was wasted.

Toward noon, we watched Dale and her girls walk down the hill toward their house, and we waited with bated breath for the next wash day—a whole week away!

Betty Hudson Galloway was born, reared, and educated in Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi. She is retired from Mississippi state service (primarily from the University of Mississippi) and as the executive vice president of a drug testing laboratory.