Washing Clothes

We didn’t have electricity on the farm until I was ten years old; before that we were kind of like the Amish..
Mom did have one modern convenience, a washing machine that was driven by a gasoline engine. On washing day she would run the flexible exhaust pipe out the basement window, check the oil, fill the tank with gasoline and tramp on the pedal crank until the engine started. The engine didn’t have a muffler so it was really loud. The machine had a clutch lever that you had to engage to start the agitator and then you could turn another lever to start the wringer. And because it was in need of some repair it produced a lot of smoke. When mom was washing I couldn’t play under the porch because of the exhaust..
In the winter the clothes were hung in the basement to dry. In the spring, summer and fall the clothes were hung out on the clothes line.
We had an old gas range down there that produced a lot of heat when you lit the oven and since we had a gas well on the farm and free gas we could use as much as we needed. We also used the gas range to heat the water to wash the clothes. When you were finished washing you ran the wash water down the drain in the cellar floor. The water that was used to wash the clothes came from a spring that was up the little valley from the house. It was piped into the basement and ran into a barrel. When the barrel was full it over flowed and the water ran out the floor drain.