You must have taken advantage of that 89 cents per can sale at Alberson/Safeway (I did).
My late wife inherited her mother's Ironrite mangle and used it for some 40 years for placemats and pillowcases. She had more placemats than a Macy's store. I was able to sell it for $50 just to get rid of it.
@pima67, we always take advantages of sales. You know you have to toss a can of tomatoes that has a 15¢ sticker on it but no 'best by" date.
I think many households bought a mangle iron to go with their finger crushing washing machine. Liane's first washing machine was not a finger crusher like the Maytag wringer machine pictured below, she inherited an Easy Spin two tub washing machine. The big tub had an agitator (missing from the one in the photo and the small one was like a colander that spun most of the water out of the clothes. A special feature of that machine was an agitator shaft that would randomly drop out of the machine when you switched the motor pulley to the spin bucket. Luckily the kitchen floor in our saltbox house had a 5° slope leading to the ankle high window ledge in the kitchhen.
I hate to paint a broad brush so this may be just your wife and mine, but boy does Liane love linens. There is a linen closet in the hall, shelves of linens in the bathroom closet and shelves of linens in the laundry room. There are bins and bags full of bedspreads duvet covers and pillow shams stored under every bed in the house. Because they don't have an expiration date, we have black bags full of pillows in the attic that I wouldn't let a muskrat sleep on. It's not a really expensive addiction because the majority of the linens are thrift store finds.
Against my better judgement I ordered four new pillows from Amazon. When Liane saw them I am thankful there were no guns or knives handy. I was told in no uncertain terms to never go behind her back and buy pillows again because "We have plenty of pillows." She took two of the pillows and slept with them that night. Next morning I was ordered to buy four more.
My 95-gallon wheeled garbage bin has been half-filled with black bags full of biohazard pillows for the past several weeks.
We had one of those in our basement too!
Lou, like every home in the wayback time, the washer, dryer (or a clothes liney thing) and the mangle iron were in the basement. In 20th century Florida homes the washer and dryer typically lived in the garage (ours was on a raised platform). I haven't inspected a lot of homes in this century but the laundry equipment seems to have migrated inside the conditioned space. Ours is in the master suite, accessed through the bathroom.
I had a wood cased mangle in the laundry room in my old house. It had a steam attachment. My new house doesn't have that kind of footprint for a 150 sqft laundry room, so I had an iron and a collapsible board, which Judy has in her sewing room. I dumped those for a hand held steamer, which so kicks irons' collective asses.
Kay, that was one fancy mangle iron. Our 1680sf house (with 700sf garage) doesn't have that kind of space either. Our folding ironing board hangs on the door to the office and I believe has been used twice in the last 29 years.
I recently bought a tiny steamer so I can someday subdue the glacier that has formed in our Samsung French Door cooling machine's icemaker. I took the guts out a few years ago and before I could install the replacement, it had enough ice and frost buildup to prevent an easy swap. Would love to icepick the person who thought an icemaker inside the refrigerated section was a good idea.
Bob,
Your bike picture and story are reminiscent of my family. My dad started with IBM after he came home from Vietnam in 1967. He worked at Fishkill between 1967 and 1979 before transferring to Tucson, Mom was a French teacher at one of the local high schools. They lived in Poughquag from 1967-1972 and Wappingers Falls from 1972-1979, but the more important part of the story is I still have mom’s Schwinn Collegiate in the basement. It looks very similar to your wife’s 10 speed in the picture, but it’s a 5 speed. Dad had a green Varsity 10 speed that my brother took to college in 1992 and promptly disposed of it for a mountain bike.
Mom is inside the Corvette in this picture. I found this in an early 70‘s school yearbook where she taught french.
@BroncoAZ, it's like we live parallel lives. Our bikes were that same Coppertone color. I found a pair that are very similar to what we had. Mine had drop-down handlebars and the shift levers were mounted on the base of the handlebar stem.
I modified my Schwinn with a Williams Hydraulic Brake company setup. An article in Popular Science provided the company address so I wrote to him asking if I could purchase the setup he provided to Sears.
A few weeks later a package arrived with an invoice inside.
He went to the trouble of putting an auxiliary lever on to match what Schwinn provided.
It never failed me but by the time it was 40 years old I worried it might and converted the Cannondale my neighbor gave to a flat handlebar with a bicycle polo brake setup (one handle operates both cables). Yes, the photo is weird because I took it when the bike was hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Because it causes helmet hair, Liane gave up autocrossing but here she is crossing the finish line in our '72 big block. Pretty sure she kept the chin strap real loose.
I am regretting replacing the battery in that old Fire tablet.
Have you access to one of these?
When I was a young fella my buddy’s room mate had a mangle in their apartment.
I have no idea for what reason other than a conversation piece. Wonder what ever happened to it.
Emil, funny you mention that. I only have seven tools on the Wall Control metal pegboard setup and six of them are Harbor Freight screwdrivers.
Your buddy's room mate may have been an admirer of the Marquis de Sade.
Rail-to-trail path on old RR right of way? Or rail bike?
(Photo from internet. I have no rail bike or rail gokart.)
Here's an Appalachian rail-to-trail bike legend:
WCYB NBC 5 Bristol and WEMT Fox 39 Greeneville offer local and national news reporting, sports, and weather forecasts to viewers in the Tennessee, Virginia Tri-Cities area including Bristol, Kingsport and Johnson City.
wcyb.com
@Squankum, that rig is what I would be on half way across a railway tressle when the 20th Century Limited rounds the curve ahead.
From the photos I've seen my brother-in-law and his wife ride the abandoned railroad beds that have no tracks or sleepers but a really nice graded ballast with finer stuff on top. Maine has some really wonderful places to cycle.
(Sorry for the low resolution of the image, I have a hunch the search engines can't find me a better version than this.)
EDIT:
OK, here's a similar image but I think of a different version of the movie, and it's been colorized.
Googling about trying to track down the one they showed us in French class in middle school, l find out there are
a lot of movies about this one hunchback. And in the 1950's, a young Anthony Quinn played him but that's sure not the one they showed us.
I'm more into the Ambrose Bierce "Oil of Dog" school of cooking.
en.wikisource.org
