Anybody remember the '60's song "Leader of the Laundromat"? I didn't think so. It was a spoof of the song "Leader of the Pack" by an all - female band called the Shangri-Las. Plug those titles into YouTube if you care to give them a listen.
Anyway, today my exciting life finds me sitting in a laundromat doing a small load of clothes. Are my washer and dryer broken? No, they work just fine. I'm just here on a nostalgic journey back to the days when I was in college (a boldface lie). Back then I used to make my weekly journey to the local "washeteria". In the town where I went to college (not the one I graduated from, the one I was asked to leave) there was the world's greatest laundromat. Picture a local tavern with the obligatory stools facing a bar. Behind those bar stools was a row of washers and dryers. A 12-ounce draught beer was the same price as a load of laundry, 25 cents. A dryer would cost the same as a bag of chips, 10 cents.
Those were the days.
The only drawback to this bar/laundromat was that your clothes always smelled like tobacco and stale beer. College students, however, paid little attention to such trivialities.
One thing that hasn't changed over the years is the character of people who frequent laundromats - simple, honest, genuine folks. In reality, laundromat people tend to be very secretive, covering the garments with plastic so as to hide their identity. But, "why the secrecy?", I've always wondered.
At this point I'd like to say that I met the wife at a laundromat as that would serve to juice up my story a bit.
Oh, hell, I'll do it anyway.
"Do you have an extra quarter?" asked the attractive young woman in the laundromat. "Sorry, I just spent my last quarter on a glass of Schlitz", said the slovenly college student who was in his underwear because his only pair of pants were in the washer.
And that's how we met.
Not really. We really met at a gas station - not quite as interesting as a laundromat but not too bad.
Readers, enjoy your day.
No comments:
Post a Comment