This home was in eastern Tennessee near Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but it could just as easily have been from the Ozarks in Arkansas. I took the shot in 1973. It was fairly common back then to see homes in Appalachia with washing machines on their front porch. Most of the homes I saw didn’t have running water. So it would have been up to the boys you see playing on the porch or crouching behind the car to pump water from their well and fill it for the machine for their mother. The machines had twin rollers to wring out the water before clothes were hung up on a line to dry. The procedure could get pretty cold in the winter time. Note, however, that this family had electricity, two cars and a TV antenna, so they were better off than many. Note the bowl of water for the dogs next to the car. Dogs often slept under the porches to stay cool on hot summer days.
