Passage II

Down at the Laundromat

[1] Down the street from the college, I attend, the Save-U Laundromat is always open, and someone is always there. [2] It was on a corner, across the street; from a drugstore on one side and a big park on the other. [3] The park isn’t really a park at all but part of the grounds of a private boarding school. [4] But no one is ever around to enforce the threats, and in the summer everyone enjoys the benches, the grass, and the coolly magnificence of the shade trees. [5] Signs are posted all over the lawn threatening every sort of drastic action against trespassers who wrongfully enter the property.(21)

The Save-U has a neon sign out front that says "Friendly 24-Hour Service," but as far as I can tell, no one really works there. The washers and dryers are lime green, and the paneling on the wall has been painted to match, although it was later varnished with some kind of artificial wood grain finish.(23) I often stare at that paneling when I don’t have a magazine or newspaper to read and don’t want to do my schoolwork. Deep in thought, I contemplate the competence of the laundromat’s interior designer.

Some machines even provide a certain amount of sustenance and entertainment. This laundromat has three soda machines, two candy machines, two pinball machines, five video machines, and a machine that eats dollar bills and spits out too much or too few quarters.

There are many regular customers whose faces have become familiar—mostly older people from around the neighborhood.(26) Usually a crowd of thirteen-year-old kids that is gathered around the video machines, regardless of the time of day .

Imagining all these people, it is that I know they remain there even after I have left. I know that I could go in there anytime, and someone would look up from playing pinball or folding clothes and nods and smiles at me. It is comforting to know that the Save-U Laundromat. And its people are always nearby.