First Mama tried lye soap, the kind she made herself from hog fat and lye, a white powder in a can with a skull and crossbones on the label. If the soap failed to clean, she soaked it in a strong solution of Lysol and water, or else she tried the abrasiveness of the fine blow sand that lay in a heap by the garden fence.

Mama's lye soap was stored in the pantry in a bushel basket lined with pages from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and it was brought out for practically any cleaning job requiring a lot of rubbing and scrubbing.

On washday, Mama bent her back over a washboard and No. 2 washtub of steaming water, grabbed a cake of lye soap in her right hand and attacked the piles of overalls, print dresses, and American Beauty underwear with concentration. Whatever stain refused to give in on the rubboard was cast into an iron washpot, set over a nest of blazing sticks and tree limbs, and boiling with a thick mixture of water and slivers of lye soap.

When the washing was all hanging on the sagging clothes lines and the rags draped along the garden fence, Mama would scoop up a galvanized bucket of washwater, shave off a little more lye soap and start in on the kitchen floor with a rag mop. The final thought was to finish off the porch with a heavy broom and the rest of the washwater.

After every meal the dishes were washed in a pan of hot water and lye soap and the same dishrag full of soapy water was used to wash the cabinets, the stove, the table, everything in and around the kitchen.

Once a week Mama brought out two dishpans, a towel, a chunk of that same lye soap, put the kettle on and told me it was time to wash my hair. Once the water was boiling, she'd alternate the hot water with cold until each pan held water with the right temperature. When the water suited her, she'd tell me to bend over and she'd wet my hair and scrub it with the bar of soap. She scrubbed my scalp, my hair, my neck, my ears, and then she'd move my head over the rinse water pan and finish off by pouring diluted vinegar over my head.

Bath time also brought the lye soap and in fact I don't remember using any other kind of soap at any time during my early years.

What Mama couldn't clean with lye soap, she disinfected with Lysol. She diluted Lysol in a bucket of water to scrub the floors after any illness. Thick solutions of Lysol and water and even small amounts put in the bath water, helped stop disease. She also soaked cuts and wounds in Lysol water, believing this solution could kill practically any destructive bacteria.

Anything that couldn't be scrubbed with lye soap or soaked in Lysol, Mama handed to me to rub with sand. I'd take the aluminum tea kettle, that same kettle that grows ivy so well today, a pan of water and a piece of old dishtowel and retreat to the sand pile. The black bottom of that kettle, soot encrusted from the kerosene stove burner, came clean after several applications of wet rag and sand and hard rubbing.

It's true Mama's cleaning methods were simple and cheap but they worked. I don't remember that our clothes wore out any faster than they do today or that our skin was any rougher or our hair any duller. In fact Mama brushed her teeth with lye soap for years and they were as sound and white as her hair the day she died at age 84.