Sitting in this plastic, white chair- with two others attached to it by a piece of black metal- in front of me, dry clothes are becoming wet.
To my left, wet clothes are becoming drying.
To my right, windows expose a dry earth becoming wet as well, the ground prickled by harsh rain drops. As my Dad always said, “The bottom just fell out.”
The laundromat is kind of fun. Now, I realized I am privileged and this sounds very white bread of me to see an exasperating chore that you have to DRIVE TO to do as “fun”, but there is an element about being here that makes one have to sit still. Have to slow down. Have to wait. Unless one is in to that mildew-y smell.
My father’s parents ran a dry cleaner. I do not know if I ever went to “the cleaners”, as they called it. If so, I would have been very young. Too young to remember. But I have been lucky enough to hear stories about the place.
I’m told my grandmother, Betty, would stand at the counter and socialize with everyone who came in. Their town was as small as the one I am from so everyone knew Betty and Marvin. At both of their funerals, dozens of people came up to me and told me about them. How they were generous to anyone in need. How they belonged to a couples group called the “Wing Dings” who danced and had dinners together. I thought about their giant record console when I heard that story. I think it even had a built-in bar.
As I grew up, I did not have the pleasure of truly knowing them. The opportunity I had as a teenager was overruled by teenage things- cartilage piercings, football games, what kind of car I was going to get. It is unfortunate that the young cannot see the youth in their elders until they themselves are older. Then you yearn to savor their stories. To know more of yourself by knowing them. By then, though, it is often too late to preserve memories from a tired, aged brain.
Betty and Marvin would take me and my dad to the Huddle House when we came to visit every other Sunday. Small towns maintain Huddle Houses and it is subconsciously important to call it THE Huddle House- not just Huddle House. Like going to the store, or in to town. I pray to God the Huddle House will not eventually become the K-Mart of diners.
I unapologetically tell you that not that long ago I looked in to how to open a HH franchise. By looked in to I mean I googled it and asked my husband what he thought. That is how serious I am about Huddle Burgers and country fried steak breakfasts. Two can dine for $6.99!
You see, diners and laundry mats are the kind of places that could quietly disappear It would not happen quickly. In fact, it would take some time to notice. On the way in to town, we would look up from the steering wheel and wonder what happened to the Coin Laundry. Like a drive-in theater, once they are gone and become nostalgia instead of common, we wish we would have saved it.
This is why I love working in a restaurant. This is why I love the texture of a starched shirt pulled out from under a plastic garment bag.
Trailers and Trampolines 