Thanks for a lot of enjoyment.

[lokringbob]

I just want to say I have really enjoyed this web site. I particularly enjoy the pic of the day and I check the discus-o-mat every day. I have emailed one of the members directly telling them of a Green Thor Wringer circa 1930? I found it at a thrift store here in Omaha. I would like to be kept informed of meeting or conventions that you might be having in the future.
I have looked at the pics that have been posted here and some of the machines really bring back the memories (the wringer washer reminds me of the times I got to spend with my grandmother helping feed the wringer). The Frigidaire washers, the friend down the street that I grew up with. The front loader Westy of the neighbor next door and the hours I would spend in front of it watching the laundry go round and around.( I was 5...not in high school ) My mother was always telling me to close the lid on our 1953 Whirlpool a match set. I think she was afraid I would fall in. This machine lasted 15 years including a dropped down the basement stairs in the move to the new house. I loved that it had a germicidal light and the tub did not stop when you lifted the lid. I always asked for a toy washing machine for Christmas or for a birthday, and my parents always wanted to keep the middle child of 5 happy, so they obliged.

 

[jimmyb]

Welcome Bob!

I couldn't agree with you more. I just can't get enough of this site - it is a great family! Great to have you here!

jimmyb

 

[tomturbomatic]

Welcome, Bob! In my junior year of high school, I took our electric typewriter to a friend's house and helped him type a paper on a Saturday morning just to be in the kitchen while his mother's big RCA Whirlpool combo was running. His mom was there ironing and I asked her all kinds of questions about it. She answered them, but good-naturedly called me a nut to be so interested in it. When it flooded the floor one day, she stopped using it and I got it. She replaced it with a plain Kenmore washer and I stopped going over there. Some might have thought I was trying for more than friendship with my friend, but I really just wanted to watch the combo and used him shamelessly to gratify my own lust for that incredible machine.

 

[toggleswitch]

Welcome!

 

[mixfinder]

My Pathology

I stared at Mixers and Washing Machines by the hour, from recorded memory, before I had my own. My mom said I was Mixerated because I would hum along with the mixer. We did not have money, running water, a mixer or a washer until I was in Jr High so I spent every moment bugging every buddy about what brands they had. If they couldn't remember I would describe each brand and model in the minutest details until a light would go on in their mind or they would yell me to leave them alone. There were 7 in our family, and yes, I was the crazed middle child, so I could wash forever and never be done. We got water in 1963 and and electric stove the same year. I slept on the kitchen floor the first night the GE range was there. I still remember my dad kicking me awake in the morning and asking me what the hell I thought I was doing! The test of whether we were sick enough to stay home from was my mom's famous line. "Oh, you don't feel well. I think some steamy water from the washer will help loosen up that cough." If you were sick enough to stay home, all day, and do 20+ loads in a square tub Maytag then she figured you were actually sick. I bought a used 1959 GE washer with the Fabric Keys, from my speech teacher, in my sophmore year. It was better than sex. In my adult life, I was a Culinary Arts Instructor at Community College and catered on the side. In addition, I had four kids. I had my Maytag 808s running day and night with laundry from home, school and catering. If only they would have let us have separate on off switches for the lights on that model. I became legend for stain removal and people I hardly knew would shove clothes in my hands to clean. For a while we had a bakery and in the bakery was a Maytag set from 1963. Lighted console, switch for cold or automatic rinse and a ventless dryer. I have been very blessed to own every appliance I ever wanted in my lifetime and if I could have back all the money I spent on appliances, I could could afford enough therapy to make myself feel okay after 55 years of being told I was a complete lunatic!
Kelly

 

[tomturbomatic]

If you sleep in moonlight, you just might be...

Kelly, you don't need therapy, just appliances. We're OK; you're OK. Nobody who called you a lunatic had a doctor's diagnosis to back up their claim, did they? Lunatics don't generally have successful lives and you have lived a successful life, PLUS you had all of your appliance dreams come true. That sounds very successful to me. I, also, have had most all of my appliance dreams come true. Do you still have the 1959 GE?

I remember my thrill with each new appliance that came into my parents' house and the joy when long sought treasures turned up in my life as an adult. Keep having appliance fun. Remember: A day without appliance fun is, well, a day without appliance fun and that's worse than almost anything.

 

[bobbyderegis]

Pathology... I LOVE it!!

Kelly,
I've been laughing all morning. I have never thought of the appliance bug as a full blown patholgy. Cracks me up! It is so good to have a site like this, where we can have our strange obsessions with like-minded others. Does this mean that we are sane and the rest of the world is bonkers???
Bobby in Boston

 

[mixfinder]

1959 GE

The 1959 GE spent a year at our house. I had found a newer V-12 with a suds saver after an appliance warehouse burned and changed it out. It was tinged with smoke, so I repainted it Avacado and mechanically it was fine. My mom traded the 59 GE to my aunt, for a rocking chair. The V-12 went, when a farmer I was working for got a new Maytag and his wife gave me 1958 Maytag. I found a Matching dryer and we ran the Maytags for a while. A lady I worked with, at a hamburger drive in, told me her neighbor bought a Westinghouse TL set and they were complete junk. If only she could get another FL. The Home Ec teacher in my high school had rentals and someone had left a Westy FL. She gave it me and I traded it to the lady with the TL set. The washer was fine and the dryer had a broken blower fan. I sold the Maytag set and we used the Westinghouse set until the summer I left home for college. I had a really good job working 12 hour shifts at a mint still. I bought a large capacity, Maytag set from Killingstads, the local Maytag and Frigidaire dealer and sold the Westinghouse set to the guy who ran the gas station in the little town of Outlook, where I grew up, with a population of 300. The Maytags ran for about 23 years, the washer longer than the dryer. My mom never liked the dryer or the lint filter in the back of the drum. She also resented the lack of a timed control and thought it over dryed the clothes. She bought a BOL direct drive Whirlpool set without a spiral agitator which could'nt handle the heavy jeans she had to wash. My dad is a rodeo stock contractor and Wrangler was a sponser, so the Wrangler stuff had to look primo in the arena. Now she is back to Maytag, thanks to you know who. She, like me, thinks drying performance in the Nortag is better than the Maytag; bigger drum, more airflow, faster drying and less wrinkles. I was surprised at how badly Wranglers wrinkled in the new Atlantis, I bought in 2000. I talked to Maytag and they reccomended using the lowest heat setting and the auto cycle to dry denim. They were right on. My Atlantis set now resides with my ex wife. (no price too great to pay for living authentically) It is really obvious the machines are light weight and I have read and heard hate stories about Norgetag, but my two experiences, mine and mom's have been without a bobble. The new Noretag washer is amazingly quiet, no thwack, thwack of the Norge transmission and no mind numbing clack, clack, clack of the Whirlpool tranny and agitator, just a quiet whoosing sound, plastic tub and all.
I am in a condo now, with a great view of the Olympics and Seattle waterfront and wash in a rebranded Kenmore/Whirlpool TL stack set. At least it is the bigger version with AOD. I have no complaints about the quality of wash, but the noise of the racheting agitator may send me over the balcony someday. I have seen older Maytag, electronic TL stack sets with the full sweep transmission advertised on Craigslist and I am very tempted to move back to supreme quality. In my childhood, Sears held the stigma of poor and ordinary. Ordinary, I am not.
Kelly

 

[mixfinder]

Lulling Sound of Water

I don't know if it is related to a childhood with out running water or having appliances as my badge of success, but I love to watch and listen to moving water. We had many Maytag dishwashers, throughout my marriage and the many moves, coast to coast. The kind with porcelain tub and belt drive that loaded upside down. (I believe the environmentalist should make prerinsing, before dishwasher, illegal, to lesson the load on the ecosystem) It would take a few revolutions and then the JetStream wash arm would hit is pace and whirl like crazy. Later, when I hate a Superba I liked its slower and throaty sound from the larger water ports on the HydraSweep wash arm. I like the sound of front loaders when the clothes hit the tub and the water swooshes. (I would have purchased Neptunes, in a heartbeat, but I don't trust anyone who won't let me watch the washer work) I can look out a window and watch springlers by the hour and love the sound of the big irrigation systems with the sprinkler the swacks the water spray and moves ahead, slowly and dreamily, like a good Southern romance novel. It took me years to be able to drain the sink, after washing dishes, if the water wasn't dirty. "It was perfectly good water," I would yell, if some unsuspecting fool drained the sink, before the water was cold. Yet I could fund the war project with my water bill from doing laundry.
Kelly

 

[mixfinder]

Typo

I meant to say I had a Superba, not hate Superba. Superba good, hate bad.
Kelly

 

[golittlesport]

Welcome, Kelly. I thought as a child that I was the only kid in the whole USA who liked washing machines. I kept it a secret from my friends. This site is great for the comraderie it brings to all of us "washer nuts."
Rich

 

[panthera]

if this be madness...

Kelly,
They gave me a warm welcome here, so I bet you get one, too. As one 'nut' to another: Our hobby is focused on machines which cook and clean.
Other folk's go around robbing the poor, spouting religion and being politicians.
Compare and then decide which of us is really nuts.

 

[mixfinder]

Acceptance

I thought the greatest sense of belonging, for me, was participating in my first Gay Pride, in 2005. It pales in comparison to being here. I found the site, Saturday afternoon, the 29th of April and watched and read until 4:00am on the Sunday, the 30th. I have been glued here, in every spare moment since, trying to stay current, watch all the videos and read the profiles. I am amazed and content.
Fondly,
Kelly

 

[washendry]

Welcome Bob

This is a great site, and a great bunch of people, (I use to think I knew something about appliances until I found this site) Ask questions, look for parts, everyone is very helpful
Some days its the nicest place to be!
Enjoy
Kim

 

[gyrafoam]

Mixfinder-------you are very perceptive-----

Water is the common denominator. Water is why we are.
I'm so glad you joined us.

 

[peterh770]

Pathology?

Aspergers, Schmatsbergers, who cares?

Welcome!

 

[gyrafoam]

Lockringbob-----

What part of Omaha are you in? Sorry I missed you---I was just up visiting Gansky three weeks ago!

Welcome to our obsession!

 

[appnut]

Welcome Bob!!!!! Omaha is the place to be.