Located at the rear of the rock house in Heber was the garage and the wash house. The wash house was on the west end of the garage. I guess it got its name because that is where the clothes washer was located part of the time. At that time, there was no addition onto the back of the rock house. All that was beyond the back wall of the house was a wooden porch. The wash house also had lots of shelves and a cellar underneath it.
Some of my earliest recollections of the wash house were when the wash house alone was on the west end of the garage. This was before we built the shop onto the garage. The old wash house only consisted of the portion above the cellar door and over to the wall of the garage on the east side.
The cellar door is in the floor of the wash house. The door opens up to reveal a set of stairs that lead down into the cellar. The cellar was always a fun place to work and play. It was where we kept all of the bottled fruits and vegetables Mom put up during the summer and fall of the year. Every year Mom would put up bottles and bottles of apples, apple sauce, peaches, pears, apricots, jam, jelly, green beans, sauerkraut, squash, pickles and relish to name a few. This was our years supply and we ate what was put up all year long. Each year one of my jobs was to check all the bottled fruit and vegetables in the cellar and discard any bottles that were open or spoiled. I also often had the job of carrying the newly bottled fruit or vegetables to the cellar and arranging them on the shelves so that we ate the oldest food first. The cellar was cool and a little damp at times so the bottle lids tended to rust over time and every year some of them had to be thrown away. The bottles were kept to be used again.
Besides bottled goods, we also kept some bags of various items in the cellar. I can remember a few times when we had bags of dried fruit (apples, pears and apricots) in the cellar. One year we had a bag of almonds. We also kept a few boxes of canned goods down there.
The main part of the wash house housed the washer. At that time we filled the washer with a garden hose or by carrying hot water from the house. We had to fill the washer as well as a tub of water for rinsing the clothes. The wringer washer was used to wash the clothes and then they were hung out on the clothesline to dry. At some point in time we got a freezer and it was put in the wash house as well. Later on, the milk separator was also located in the wash house.
When the shop was built sort of around the wash house, the west wall was removed and the wash house became a part of the shop addition to the garage. Today you would never know that a separate wash house ever even existed if I hadn’t told you so.