As the correct amount of the "New & Improved" laundry detergent, manufactured by Procter & Gamble, was measured into the automatic washer, I asked myself, "I wonder how and when this giant corporation first began operation?" This opened the floodgate, and childhood memories of long ago came rushing to the present. I recalled the first commercial laundry soap I had seen. It was a sample box that Procter & Gamble had placed in the new electric washing machine that had been delivered to our home a quarter of a century ago.
Then my mind flashed back to still earlier years when as a self-sustaining family, Mama made our own laundry soap. Soap-making at our house was usually a late spring, once-a-year operation. As a lad, it was my assignment to assist my brother in preparing for this important day. Early in the morning we took the blackened wash tub, hanging on a nail on the side of the granary, and set it on a steel tripod which Papa had fashioned out of a discarded steel wagon tire. This was merely a round iron rim a little smaller than the bottom of the tub. It had three legs about a foot in length which permitted a fire to be built under the tub to heat the contents.
After this was all in place, a supply of fuel was needed. This we took from our year's supply of kindling that was neatly stacked in the woodshed. We placed it near at hand to be used when all else was in readiness. Mama then assembled the ingredients needed. This included all the unused lard, kitchen grease, and other animal fat that had accumulated during the winter. She carefully weighed it and then measured out the correct amount of water and other ingredients. Then she warned us, kids, to stand back. Apprehensively we watched as she opened the correct number of cans of Rex Lye and carefully poured them into the tub, constantly and gently stirring as she cautiously mixed her special recipe for homemade soap. Then the fuel was placed under the blackened tub and the fire was lighted. The contents of the tub must not fluctuate in temperature. It must not boil too vigorously, nor it must not be allowed to cool. Constant stirring and frequent skimming was necessary to assure that the end product was smooth, clear, and without foreign matter. It was a long, cautious process.
After hours of careful attention, the solution had become the correct consistency, which was thick and "gooey," and Mama said with a sigh, "It's done! We'll let the fire die out, cover the tub, and let it stand overnight." The next morning the tub was removed from the tripod and turned upside down on a four-foot square board, and the solidified, but soft, contents were removed. This was cut into squares and set on a board in the sun to cure and dry. As a reward for helping Mama, she let us each autograph a bar of soap by scratching our names in one of the squares. To us, it was as great an honor to have our names "engraved" in a bar of Mama's homemade soap as to have had it chiseled in a slab of marble. When the soap was dry, it was boxed and stored ready for use on the weekly Saturday wash day.
It was my assignment as a lad on that morning to grate a bar or two of this soap into a powder. To do this I used a gadget Papa had made which was a discarded rolling pin with a piece of galvanized tin nailed around it that had been punched full of holes with a large nail. This was placed on a frame with a hopper over it and a crank 40 attached to turn the cylinder. The soap was placed in the hopper; and as the soap came in contact with the sharp edges of the tin, and as the cylinder turned, the soap was grated into a powder similar to today's "New & Improved" detergent and was easily dissolved in hot water.
These and many other recollections rushed through my mind as I stood watching this "New & Improved" detergent do its duty. I wondered if, in truth, it was any better, or even as good, as Mama's homemade soap of long ago. I wondered again, perchance did a "Johnny Procter's" mother and a "Billy Gamble's" mother pool their resources and expertise in soap-making and form a company to make soap for other people which later became known as Procter & Gamble? If Mama had done this, I wondered what the name of Mama's company would have been. But even so, I would emphatically say today that Mama was the "Procter & Gamble" of OUR FAMILY of yesteryear.
Source: Personal recollection of the author.
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