Bern - population 204 - runs just a couple of blocks on each side of Main Street, the kind of place people think of when they yearn for small-town America. It's home to a meat plant, a dairy-supply business, a couple of construction companies and a lumberyard. There's a grocery store, a Laundromat, a bank, a beauty parlor, and a ladies' shop called The Clothes Rack. Plus the school, of course, and the spanking-new Bern Community Library.
When townsfolk hang out just to talk, as likely as not it's at the small engine repair shop or the Bern Cafe. And what they've been talking about lately is . . . laundry.
Laundry has put Bern on the map. Brought national television to town. Earned it a spot on the Internet.
That's because Bern is a living laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy, testing new high-efficiency tumble-action washing machines - the front-loading kind that have no agitator and use a miserly amount of water - to see whether they do indeed save water and energy when they are used by real people doing real laundry under everyday conditions.
For months now, dozens of families such as the Millers from the Bern meat plant, the Lortschers in town, the Haverkamps out on their hog farm, and the Lockharts at their dairy have kept meticulous records - first on their old machines, and then on the 104 new front-loading Neptunes installed by Maytag at the end of July.
``It seemed onerous when we first looked at the idea - there's a full page of information that needs to be filled out,'' says Betty Lortscher, who helped organize the study in town. ``But once you get into the habit, it takes maybe a minute before and after the wash.''
