# 5 Washtub for Miss Healthypants

This was too long for the comments section, plus I wanted to show photos. For those folks who know what a #5 washtub is, move along, move along. Nothing to see here.

For Miss Healthypants who was apparently raised on concrete, this is a #5 washtub:



Country folks all had one and it hung on a peg on the back porch. On Saturday night it was filled with water (while still on the back porch) from the well and you took a bath in it. Your legs hang over the sides and there is lots of sloshing. That's why baths took place on the back porch.


Of course most country folk don't look like this lady during a Saturday night bath.

After indoor plumbing came along the washtub wasn't used for baths anymore but all grannies kept one anyway. If you got too dirty playing outside, your grandma might snatch you nekkid and plunk you in the washtub out in the yard to knock off the big chunks before she let you back inside.

If you got annoying she would plunk you in the washtub along with some dishwashing liquid and a garden hose and let you entertain yourself for a couple of hours blowing bubbles. You got to wash the yard dogs too while you were out there. Grandma was a smart cookie.



Eventually, the washtub would rust out and wouldn't hold water anymore. At that point you either planted maters in it or turned it into a washtub bass.



I worked with a guy who could wail on a washtub bass. I was amazed that an old tub, a 1x4, and a piece of clothesline could really make music...in tune at that!

And that, Miss HP, is a #5 washtub.

Diarrheagram Variety Store

The next in the series....

Start with this photo of Main St., Smackover, Ark., c. 1922:


Add 105° heat and a mild case of creative insanity, and ya get this, a model of the first building on the left:

Yep, waaaaaay too much time on my hands.

Actually I bought a box fan to beat the heat. The empty cardboard box started calling, "Cut me, glue me, paint me!"

The heat must be getting to me when inanimate objects start talking.

Must go get water.

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UPDATE:
Sissy says I must show the scale of these diarrheagram structures. OK, fair enough.



That is a U.S. quarter on the front porch. The building is roughly 5" x 5" and 5" tall at the peak of the roof.

The raised-panel front doors are tongue depressors, as is the store sign. The roof is corrugated cardboard with one flat side ripped away. The porch posts are 1/8" balsa wood. The porch deck and building corner timbers are 1/4" "skinny craft sticks" (says the label on the bag.) The little crate on the porch is 1/8" square balsa wood, quartered to 1/16" square. Micro-tweezers were required to glue that bad boy together.

The oil derrick is 11.5" tall to the top of the structure; 13.5" tall including the oil spurties. The base is 4" square.

Field Trip to Arkansas Post

Yesterday, Hubby announced, "Tomorrow morning, we are going on a field trip."

"Uh Oh", my little kid brain thought, "That sounds educational and I'm not gonna like it."

I was kinda, sorta right. It was educational, but I liked the chosen destination, Arkansas Post. We had discussed doing a day trip there for some time but had never gotten around to it. The part I didn't like was leaving at 8:00 a.m. I don't move well at that hour. This morning we finally got on the road at 10:30 a.m. That's not too bad considering I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. talking to a friend in California.

On the way we passed through the little town of Tillar, Arkansas. The First United Methodist church there had the coolest looking dome. The building is Classical Revival, was built in 1913, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I'm a sucker for interesting architecture and make Hubby screech to a halt at buildings with interesting details.

Most of the landscape over in eastern Arkansas is agricultural fields....miles and miles and miles of soybeans. The sky there is big and wide and you can see forever. It's very different from Lower Arkansas where the landscape is miles and miles of pine trees. I thought this photo of a cloud over a Dumas, Arkansas soybean field was neat and showed the wide-open spaces.

Then there's the quirky stuff. This gigantic tire man was in front of Charlie's Tire Service and TV Repair in Dumas, Arkansas.

The Arkansas River was swollen from all the rain we've gotten lately. The debris was rollin' down the river at a pretty fast clip. I wouldn't want to be a little boat out there on the river any time soon. It would be toooo dangerous.

This is a log cabin just outside of Arkansas Post at the museum.

The grounds of the Arkansas Post National Memorial were beautiful, lush and green. This is a spot on the walking trail by the river.

I was a little disappointed to find there are no historic buildings or re-creations on the grounds, just a few stone foundation outlines. The only existing evidence of the settlement at Arkansas Post was this 24-foot deep brick cistern built about 1811 by Frederic Notrebe, a fur dealer and cotton planter.

There was a scale model of two sides of the fort wall to show how it was constructed. It was built of split red oak. Bullets could penetrate only about an inch into the wood providing protection to the soldiers.

On our way home we passed through the little community of Mist, Arkansas in Ashley County. It's so tiny it doesn't have its own ZIP code. The signposts marking the beginning and end of Mist are about 100 yards apart. I thought Mist was a cool name for a town.