MAKING LYE SOAP THE ARKANSAS WAY

I went to the local Wal-Mart store today for laundry soap. As I stood in the aisle looking at the different brands and trying to decide to buy powder or liquid, I thought about how lucky my grandma had been. She had never had to choose what to buy in the line of soap. Her soap was kept in the cellar inside stone jars or wrapped tightly in muslin.

Arkansas women made soap after a winter of saving lots of hickory wood ash and months of saving fat scraps, tallow and suet. These two ingredients gave her what she needed for making her own soap ... lye and grease.

She would pile her wood ash into a troughlike box with a spout leading from the bottom. It was generally called a "hopper." The hopper was usually lined, with either corn shucks or straw to keep the ashes and liquid from leaking out of the cracks. A large crock jar was placed under the spout to catch the drippings. She would pour a bucketful of water at a time over the ashes until lye began to drip out of the spout.

After she had accumulated several gallons of lye, it was heated in a large iron wash pot over an open fire. For each gallon of lye that was poured into the pot, two pounds of rendered grease was added. As the mixture came to a boil, it was stirred with a wooden paddle until it thickened. The soap was then poured into a container that would not be eaten away or rusted by the lye in the soap. If the soap hardened it would be cut into blocks and stored in a dry place until used. If the soap remained soft it was called soft soap and used for whatever job soft soap could be used for. It was usually stored in crock jars or hollow logs, sealed at one end until used.

Some folks swear that lye soap is a wonder-worker. It is proven to be a laundry whitener and spot remover. Some refuse to wash their hair in anything but lye soap. It is claimed to be good for flea and tick bites, bed bugs and itch, and as a miracle cure for healing cuts. No mountain home can be found without it. Once you have used lye soap, you will be spoiled for life.

Following are some processes used by Arkansas women to prepare the fat for the lye soap:

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