My Roots...

Tampico, Illinois... birthplace of Ronald Reagan.  Population 850    1990 graduating class had 36 students... the largest class to graduate from Tampico High School.  Home to the Adamson clan:  3 boys, 9 girls & 1 bathroom.  No central heating... 1 wood burning stove, no ac... lots of noisy fans!  Unimaginable memories.   Laundry... you just can't imagine the piles no mountains we had.  It's 1988 can you guess how we did laundry?  Let me tell you.  You know those old ringer washers?  The ones with an aggitating tub & rollers you push the clothes through into a rinse tub.  Yeah these...

Now that you get the picture let me tell you how it worked.  You sort mountains of clothes into whites, lights, mediums, darks, jeans, towels, & sheets.  Fill up all the tubs.  Then talk someone into putting there hand in the water to see if it was "shocking" today... something with not having a grounded outlet perhaps.  If it was shocking us we stood on wooden pallets.  If you had a sore or cut on your hand it didn't matter what you stood on... you got the snot schocked out of ya!  Always start with whites... clean water = whites.  Next the lights, followed by the mediums, darks, then last came jeans... as many as you could get through!  Add more detergent each new load and a little new water.  Aggitate... ring-out... rinse... ring-out... rinse... hang-out.  Oh... the times we had singing our infamous made up songs as we washed our clothes!  Julie got her arm pulled 3/4 of the way through the ringer before we got the thing popped open.  Most the time it would just grab fingertips... maybe a hand once in a while.  Jeanie & I were always in the basement doing the sorting & washing.  Tressa & Julie were the clothes line crew.  Unless they had snuck off to play... or were they hiding?!  The underware on the line was a little humiliating.  We lived in town & there were 9 girls... lots of bras & undies!  Plus a few boys cruising by. We hung up our clothes even in the dead of winter!  We laughed so hard the first time we brought in the jeans... they stood up all by themselves.  They were FROZEN!  Talk about a new definition for freeze dried.    College brought a lot of new experiences.  One of which was the washing machine... what an amazing invention.  We finally came into possesion of a washing machine that only spun... hmmmmmm.  

... to be continued