Laundry

There are lots of things I like about living in Maine. One of them is being able to use antiques in everyday life. Take, for instance, our local "Launderette". This noble cornerstone of Kittery commerce was established some time around the ice age. It is now run by a father and son who skulk around warning clientele about the dangers of overloading the washers.

There are 26 washers in the laundrette and the owners instigate runs on individual machines by programming 2 of the 26 to cost 50 cents less than the other 24. This leads to the patrons, myself included, to troll along the rows of ancient washers, subtly looking for the machines with 4 coin slots instead of 6. These machines are inevitably taken, leaving the people who pay full price to feel vaguely ripped off.

Depending on the time of day that you're there, the kind of people you share the laundrette with will vary. In midsummer at midday, it's mostly casually dressed tourists washing the bedding from their summer homes. At six in the morning, you generally find Navy yard workers at the end of their shift, surreptitiously drinking beer out of brown paper bags. They generally avoid conversation as they wait for the cycles to run but occasionally they amuse themselves with jovial and aggressive flirtation. They are largely harmless however, the alcohol making it necessary for their movement to be restricted to Formica chairs that they've settled in. In late afternoon, you find exhausted looking parents in these chairs, ignoring their children as run laps around the outside of the washers, making navigating the narrow rows a live obstacle course!

Jaded and suspicious people choose to stay right next to their washers the throughout the entire cycle to guard their clothes against thieves, pranksters and other vandals. Oddly, these are generally the clothes that no one in their right minds would steal. However, the owners stare at every new arrival to the laundrette as if recognizing our faces from America's Most Wanted.

The dryers are even more exciting than the washers! They tend to shrink clothes down to doll-sized while at the same time redecorating them with rust spots. They wheeze and occasionally just decide not to dry your clothes. I mean, they fool you by going around and around for an hour but then when you open them to retrieve your clothes, they are still soaking wet and only slightly warmed despite the piles of quarters you pump into them!

I've been thinking about buying a washer and dryer for the house. This would definitely be cheaper and more convenient but there's a part of me that would miss the surly owners, poorly maintained washers and rusty dryers.