On my mission, I was transferred to Simbach am Inn in June 1987. Simbach is a small city on the Inn River, which forms the border between Germany and Austria. Braunau am Inn (Austria) is directly across the river from Simbach.
We lived at Münchner Straße 2 in a one-room apartment. The apartment also had a bathroom and a small kitchen.
The branch in Simbach had about 25 to 30 adults and 20 to 25 children who attended regularly. Geographically, the branch boundaries covered Passau, Burghausen, Marktl, and Mühldorf in Germany, and Braunau, Burgkirchen, and Mattighofen in Austria.
While not an important detail of this particular story, you might be interested to know that my companion and I rode bicycles to all of those cities from Simbach on multiple occasions. We only went to Passau and Mühldorf once.
You might also be interested to know that Braunau am Inn is the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.
The real reason for this story is to talk about how we did our laundry in Simbach.
We had our own washing machine, but no dryer.
But our washing machine was not the ordinary machine most of you know. It was very small. How small, you might ask?
Let me tell you about it.
Think of a five-gallon bucket. Now imagine a plate at the bottom of the bucket with four or five raised nubs about one-half inch high, one inch wide, and three inches long. The nubs were arranged in a star pattern around the plate. On the bottom of the bucket was a belt connected to a small electric motor, perhaps one-quarter horsepower.
That was our washer.
We would put the bucket in the bathtub, add our clothes and some laundry detergent, add water, and plug in the electric motor. The plate in the bottom would agitate back and forth, alternating between clockwise and counterclockwise directions. We would set a timer for 30 minutes. Then we would pour out the water, wring out the clothes by hand, and put them back in the washer with fresh water for a 30-minute rinse cycle.
After rinsing, we would wring them out by hand again and hang the clothes on a folding drying rack in our bedroom and living room to dry.
I could wash two or three white shirts at once, or several pairs of garment tops and bottoms.
While we did wash our bed sheets using this washer, I doubt there was much cleaning that happened.
Laundry day became a routine exercise in patience. We learned to plan lessons, study time, and even sleep around the slow, deliberate rhythm of washing, wringing, and waiting for clothes to dry.
In October, the mission president transferred both my companion and me to Freilaßing, and we closed the Simbach area because there were too few missionaries. We took the washing machine with us, but our new apartment in Freilaßing had a regular washing machine.
Several months later, I was serving in the mission office. Our missionary numbers were building up again for the summer, and we opened a new area with a set of elders. After the elders arrived at their new apartment, they sent word to the mission president complaining that there was no washing machine.
I told the mission president about the small, now-abandoned washing machine in Freilaßing. We retrieved it and gave it to the elders who were complaining.
They did not appreciate the machine and soon complained again, this time about the tiny and ineffective washer.
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| A portable washer similar to the one we used in Simbach. Ours had no lid, and the tub was not translucent. |
I will be forever grateful for that little machine and for the patience it taught me.
My companion and I got into a routine. We washed a load of laundry every day, but rotated turns so that I washed something every other day.
I have often wondered what happened to that washing machine. I have done a few internet searches over the years and have never been able to find a picture of one like it.
Here is a picture of our clothes drying rack, with every article of clothing I owned as a missionary. Sadly, I do not have a picture of the washing machine.
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| Every article of clothing I owned as a missionary, drying in our Simbach apartment. |
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