Laundri-Matters

I've just come back from tickling the underbelly of Ashland.

The coin scoop for the washing machine in our building is jammed, so I couldn't do my laundry here yesterday, (My apartment's assigned laundry day is Sunday.) and I needed to do laundry. So having gone to sleep last night at 10 p.m., I woke up at 4 a.m. ('cause that's what I do; I sleep six hours left to my own devices), gathered my clothes and detergent, and took off for Ashland's only 24 hour joint (as far as I could tell) the laundromat on E. Main Street.

Being Ashland's only 24 hour establishment and being that it is dry, warm, and quite quiet in the wee hours, it seems that the laundromat turns into Ashland's unofficial homeless shelter. There were two big, gamey guys sleeping at the far end when I came in. Well, one was sleeping, and the other was reading a book. Apparently, my banging of washer doors disturbed his atmosphere since he immediately retired to his sleeping bag for some shut eye. His buddy did not have a sleeping bag. He was simply stretched out across three washers, which the rules of the laundromat, placed on the wall for everyone to see, pretty much forbade, by the way. A sign on the door said that they place was under 24 surveilance, and sure enough, I could see two cameras above the door pointing to opposite corners of the building. I thought that possibly a crack, private security force was sitting at the other end, waiting to swoop down with tear gas, tazers, and Stephen Segall at the first sign of a ruckus. Somehow, though, I thought it more likely that the most I could hope for from the cameras would be at some later date, a bunch of disinterested cops would be able to sit around a grainy video tape and say, "Yep. That's the killing blow right there." "Are you sure? Let's run it again? I find it hard to believe he didn't incite a riot or something. He was the Black one after all."

But my neighbors didn't bother me, and I didn't bother them. They slept at their end, and I did my laundry at mine while listening to one the audio books I bought for the trip. The only time I got worried was when a third guy walked in ten minutes into my drying cycle. He was pretty scary. You know the type: big, scraggly beard, unkempt long hair, shabbily dressed. I immediately hate and mistrust people who look like that. With two guys, I figured I had a chance to put enough hurt on them to discourage them hurting me. With three guys, I was pretty sure the scales were tipped in the "hurting me" direction. Maybe this was all part of a plan. Maybe moving to the sleeping bag had been a move made to disguise the activation of the Homeless Walki-Talki! "Yeah, Bruce? We got a pigeon at the laundromat. No, he's just starting his dryer cycle. He's a big guy, scraggly beard, unkempt long hair, shabbily dressed, you know the type. My guess is he's hiding the Crown Jewels under all that fat. Send in some reinforcements ... and tell Skip to stop sleeping on top of the washers before he gets us into trouble." It was still dark outside, quiet, the occasional passing truck, no one on the street ... except maybe for more of these guys' buddies. Had I heard movement in the bakery next door? Could I chance it? I sat my ground, listening to Al Franken, calmly looking for something I could use as a weapon in a pinch. Unfortunately the unofficial homeless shelter didn't seem to allow armed pinches. A few minutes later, the guy walked out and I was back to my two-to-one odds. He probably came in to see if any of the others new the latest stock report or something like that.

Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. I wanted to do my laundry; they wanted to sleep. Our lives did not intersect. The machines finished drying; I gathered my stuff; and I stepped out into the dark, early morning fog. (And hoo boy! Does this town like its early morning fog! They just can't seem to get enough of it.) On the way home, I found another open building, the U.S. Post Office. I mailed the last of my Netflix DVDs. No homeless people sleeping in the lobby of the Post Office. And that just goes to illustrate the death of Socialism in America. Here's the government providing basic infrastucture, leaving the private sector to make do as it will with society's social ills. By the way, what is it about laundomat dryers that makes it so that clothes seem dry when you take them out only to have them feel moist once you get them home? You'd think that kind of engineering ingenuity could be put to better purpose.