"
The clothes were not laundered each week, but were saved up often for
several weeks or even a month or two, and then came a wash-day frolic.
Imagine wash day looked forward to as a delightful event! So it was,
however, to many California children. Senorita Vallejo, in the Century
Magazine (Vol. 41), thus describes one of these excursions:--
"It made us children happy to be waked before sunrise to prepare for the
'wash-day expedition.' The night before, the Indians had soaped the
clumsy carreta's great wheels. Lunch was placed in baskets, and the
gentle oxen were yoked to the pole. We climbed in under the green cloth
of an old Mexican flag which was used as an awning, and the white-haired
Indian driver plodded beside with his long oxgoad. The great piles of
soiled linen were fastened on the backs of horses led by other servants,
while the girls and women who were to do the washing trooped along by
the side of the carreta. Our progress was slow, and it was generally
sunrise before we reached the spring. The steps of the carreta were so
low that we could climb in or out without stopping the oxen.
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