I  don’t waste a lot of my time watching television commercials. I consider them a nuisance when they’re bound and determined to take my mind off an interesting program or sports event and I’m just as determined to look the other way.

However, that’s not always the case. One recent evening, I saw a TV commercial that grabbed my attention. It was advertising a washing machine that is capable of washing two loads of clothes at the same time. That got me to thinking how difficult it was to wash three or four loads of clothes by hand in the wintertime when I was a kid growing up on a farm in East Central Alabama.

You had to have a lot of gumption to work outside in freezing weather and a lot of physical stamina to finish the job.

Us kids were put on notice by our mother the day before washday. She would remind us to go to our spring (artesian well) and set up the iron wash pot and two washtubs. Afterwards, we were to fill them with water from the spring and carry kindling and firewood from the woodpile to the wash site, a distance of 50 yards down a steep embankment.

Washday got underway at the break of day. First, a fire was started under the wash pot and stoked with wood until the water inside reached boiling temperature. Chips of Octagon soap were added to the water, followed by colored clothes (blue jeans, overalls, flannel shirts, socks etc.).

A battling stick served as an agitator. It was used to continually turn the clothes in the pot, fully exposing them to the soapy hot water. After approximately 30 minutes, they were removed one piece at a time with the battling stick. Jeans and overalls were placed on a battling stump and the remainder went into a tub of cold water for rinsing.

The denim clothes were struck repeatedly with the battling stick to remove any soil left after being boiled in the washpot. This job was left to us kids, the youngest to the oldest.

At the same time, the washed clothes in the first tub were rinsed and squeezed lightly to remove most of the soap. The next step was to place them in a second tub of cold water and wring them out as hard as hand and arm strength would allow. The denims, after being beaten on the stump, followed the same path.

Their next stop was the clothesline or the top strand of bob wire on a pasture fence where they were hung to dry. With weather permitting, they would dry in two to three hours and be ready to take inside for folding and ironing.

For a family of eight, much of the typical washday was yet to come, three or four more washpots filled with dirty clothes.  Like a nightmare that won’t go away, I can still feel an aching back and fingers and toes that I couldn’t feel because they were so cold.

Thanks goodness those of us who’ve been there and done that have endured our last washday blues on the farm.

Clif Knight is a staff writer for the Hartselle Enquirer.