Washing Diapers
By Abraham Lincoln 

Patty, my wife of 56 years, used to wash diapers by hand until we got an old Maytag wringer washing machine. She still had to dump the poop off the diapers and rinse them out using cold water from the kitchen pump. She stored them in a bucket of water. On washday, or when she was running out of diapers, she would pick them up and put them in the washing machine. 

The water was heated using a heater that you dropped into the tub of water and then plugged the other end into an electrical wall outlet. It would take over an hour to heat a washtub of water. The rinse water was always plain old water out of the well and cold. So your hands would get cold and then red and almost raw from hands being in hot and cold water all day long. 

I think the only soap we ever used was Ivory Snow flakes. And once the wash was done, she still had to deal with a wash basket of clothes that were soaking wet. And when the weather outside was warm Patty hung the clothes on a clothesline outside. I made the clothesline out of #9 wire and two posts with cross arms. It lasted as long as we lived in the house in Gordon. 

When it was too cold to hang them outside she would hang them in the house on racks and on a clothesline strung between hooks in the different rooms. The house would fill up with moisture from the wet clothes and often freeze on the outside walls. The wallpaper would be covered with ice. 

Those days were before television — we listened to music on 78 vinyl records and a favorite radio station. There were a lot of talk shows on radio and I listened to one of those. The radio shows were filled with controversy and like wrestling — faked bloody noses, faked breaking-back falls and people were fed up with stations that pumped out hate and violence.  

Wrestling was fixed — people took turns being bad or good — the bad guys got a bigger audience than the good guys. Radio was the same. There were good stations and a lot of bad stations. Bad got more listeners and companies lined up to advertise on the bad radio shows. 

There were exceptions. Ruth Lyons had a program that lasted for many years — the 50 Club on WLW radio and later, the 50-50 Club on television and most people in the Miami Valley watched her program when it came out on television. The people on the show with her became big too — Willy Thall, Marion Spelman, Bonnie Lou and Bob Braun. Peter Grant had a voice that was perfect for television. It was the early stage for television and radio was growing old. Trying to compete with the success of Ruth Lyons in Cincinnati, Columbus came up with Sally Flowers and her bandanna covered hair and flowered skirts but it never was the same and didn’t last long.