The Wringer Washer

Today whenever you wash clothes all you have to do is open the washer load up the tub, add the detergent and select the wash setting and let it go and you can go and do something else.

Well before all of this you had wringer washers.

We sold a many wringer washers out of the Mrs. P.Y. Waters Grocery as well in the early days of Waters Bros. Furniture and Appliances.

Whenever we delivered them to the customers they were either trading from one wringer washer or they were trading up from the boiling pot and rub board. It was these customers that had just gotten electricity that were now able to have an electric wringer washer. We explained to the customer how to fill the tub with fresh water and plug it in to their electric socket and turn the washer on and it would wash the clothes for them. You could run the clothes thru the wringers on top of the washer to get the water out of the clothes, but be careful it could catch your fingers and hands thing they were clothes. This is when you had to be quick and hit the reverse on the rollers by twisting the side of the ringers to reverse them. Once the washing was done you dropped down the hose on the side of the washer and let it drain into the yard or a bucket. Once it was drained you could add clean water back into the tub so that you could rinse your clothes. Then use the wringers to ring out the water from the clothes so that you could hang them on the clothes line.

Someone had to stay close to the washer whenever it was running, because they had wheels on the bottom and when ever it was washing they had a tendency to move around on the porch or floor. Some have been know to roll off of the porch.

We loved to use the old lids on trade in wringer washers to sit in to slide down a steep grassy hill in the summer and fall and in the winter we used them as a sled. Some kids would take out the agitator and use it as a megaphone. It worked real well for this because it was cone shaped.

Some people used the wash water from the washer to bath in before throwing the water out. And used the rinse water to water their flowers.

Palmer Waters