My “majikica” [grandmother] was born in 1905. The event I’m going to talk about happened 100 years ago. She used to tell me how in those days they washed krpare (rag rugs) in the Danube, specifically in a branch of the Danube that was near the village. They called it “at Đuka’s vineyard”. They gathered there to wash when it was summer. They collected the heavy laundry from the houses; she would collect the rag rugs. Rag rugs were floor coverings made by hand from material that was available in the household, left over from clothes, from worn-out things, etc. In this part where we lived, the houses were made of rammed earth (nabijače), and the floors inside were earthen. Those earthen floors had to be maintained. The housewife maintained them by kaljenje. Kaljenje (plastering/smoothing) means taking soot/ash (gar) from the furnace, or from the stove, dissolving it in water, and smoothing that earth surface with a coarse brush. So it was smooth and coated, I remember that very well, coated with that kalj (soot mixture). The rag rug was placed on top, and as people walked on those rugs, they got dirty. … Before winter, they prepared for celebrations (svečari) and invited guests, and the housewife didn’t like her floors to be dirty, meaning those rugs that were walked on. The rugs were colorful, and they were about a meter wide, and two, three, four meters long. They rolled them up to store them more easily. Rolled up like that, she would put them on a small cart, which was wooden with one metal wheel. … And when she had stacked them, she put the prakljača (washing paddle) on top. The prakljača was a wooden paddle, a large one, with which she would beat those rugs there at the water. In a container, she carried either lye, which she made from ash, or what she made as a mixture for soap. … This was done by young women, girls, and mainly married women. … [They went] there where the branch of the Danube was, where the water was crystal clear. … And then they washed those rugs by beating them with that paddle. And when they were done, they would help each other spread out the long fabric. There were bushes around, and that’s how it dried. They couldn’t bring them home wet, because there was nowhere to dry them.