Had a stubborn stain on a white shirt today, so did what I have always done: grabbed a piece of homemade soap and a washboard and gave it a good scrub. The soap was made by my mother’s uncle, Elmer Hardy, mostly likely with chicken fat as he raised hens for meat and eggs. Not sure what else went in the soap, but it certainly contains lots of lye and is hard on your hands if you do a lot of washing with it. Red knuckles will result if you are out of the habit, as I am, and you scrub too vigorously for too long.

In case you’ve never done it but find yourself in a rustic backwoods cabin with dirty clothes, you place the washboard in a laundry tub with some hot water, rub the soap over the washboard, leaving some behind in the grooves, and then scrub the piece of clothing over it. I use our modern plastic laundry tub, run a couple of inches of water in the bottom and a bucket for rinsing, and wash and rinse and wash and rinse until clean. Hang your cleaned item out on the line and the sun will do the rest of the bleaching!

Uncle Elmer died in 2002 at age 92, and I can’t remember when he last kept hens or made soap, but it was many years before that, so that soap could be over 30 years old and is still hard and perfect. He didn’t use individual moulds but instead poured the mixture into a big pan and cut it before it set too hard, so some of the pieces have rounded bottoms. I laugh when I see bougie soap makers now going for a similar raw look to their hand and body soaps, rough and misshapen bars wrapped up in brown paper and twine.

Who taught me how to wash clothes this way? My mother, I suppose, though I don’t remember her showing me, I just picked it up from watching her, as she watched her grandmother, and on and on back in time. My hands hold old knowledge.