1956 Karolina in the school garden. The reason my two front bottom teeth are missing are because of the next picture. (see descr

1956 Karolina in the school garden. The reason my two front bottom teeth are missing are because of the next picture. (see description) I remember wearing a bright red sweater to school that looked suspiciously like this one! Proper girls and boys always carried a handkerchief in their pockets, but sometimes the sleeve was quicker. I remember the red sweater and it's snail tracks. I got in trouble with my mother more than once for "forgetting" to use my handkerchief.

Another thing I remember is that in Germany everyone wore the same clothes all week long and changed them on Saturday after our baths. I guess everyone wanted to be clean for church. ;-) People hear that and think we were dirty, they forget or don't know that people washed with a basin every day! I suffered with that over here for maybe a year (wearing the same clothes every day) until we moved to Germantown and I was going to be starting a new school.

Finally one day I got up the courage to speak to my mother about my clothes, or lack of them, as I saw it. It was a difficult thing to do because I knew there wasn't much money, but at the same time I didn't want other children laughing at me or whispering about me behind my back. I told her I didn't need a lot of clothes but maybe just enough so I could change into something different for a week. It seemed to me that I was asking for the moon and yet I asked anyway.

My mother listened closely and nodded here and there. When I was finished she didn't say anything and I believed that my hopes were dashed. I tried to prepare and steel myself for what was surely going to be happening in the new school. It was some time after that, I don't recall how long, mother just said one day we were going shopping and I was to come along. We came home and I had clothes to change during the week. I really would like to hug her right now.

Clothing was treated with care. It was hung up at night or folded carefully after being inspected and brushed with a clothes brush. In those days clothing didn't go in a hamper. Well, I guess we didn't need one - it would never have been filled!

No synthetic fibers, so nothing melted on laundry day, Saturday. The wood stove got fired up and a *huge* pot was filled with boiling water and our clothes were boiled to get them clean, and clean they got. Still in the 80's or 90's people from Germany (and maybe other places in Europe) looked down on Americans for using washing machines that didn't boil the clothes. They couldn't understand how we could stand to put clothing on our bodies that wasn't clean.