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January 1939. "Housewife boiling clothes -- Chicot Farms, Arkansas." Note the primitive nature of this washer -- it doesn't even have a "simmer" setting. 35mm nitrate negative by Russell Lee, Farm Security Administration. View full size.
My maternal grandmother had a Maytag wringer, (originally gasoline-engined, but converted to electric). We spent a summer with her when I was six. Once when the Maytag blinked, we washed in her identical pot and wrung by hand. I remember adding "bluing" to the rinse to de-yellow the whites. She was a little more fashionable than this woman. But my paternal grandmother, who lived for some years in Arkansas, was not. I had to look twice to make sure this wasn't her. I can't say definitively not.
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