Fireweed Coin-Op Laundry

With their triple load washers and their quadruple load dryers, the Fireweed Coin Operated Laundry facility (located on Fireweed Lane, 7 blocks from the Invisible Hamlet) was an ideal place to launder our massive bed linens.

Quite warm in my Sorel coat in the midst of the generated heat from busy machines within conjoined with the balmy 41 degree weather tonight, I sat by the large bay windows to absorb the cooler air and to keep a keen eye on my comforter, sheets, and pillow cases.

A fat redneck family was there, parented by two plus-300 pound giants and kindered by two fat girls and a hyperactive young boy of 9 or 10 with a sweet curly blonde mullet. All of them had a liter of soda, all different colors and sugar levels. The father barked orders like an idiotic drill sergeant while the mother nursed a whooping cough by chain smoking Pall Malls in the howling wind just outside the two way swinging doors.

An old spaniard with white hair, mustashe, and beard whistled tradional tunes with reverence and perfect pitch. This is the sound I focused on while reading difficult pages from Doctor Sax by Jack Kerouac.

With a squeeky voice, the heavy father of the redneck clan ordered his underlings to follow him to the Lucky 7, just a few buildings down. He announced he needed cigarettes and they could all have a small treat if they left thier soda pops behind and followed him immediately. Fifteen wonderfully silent minutes later, the children poured back through the doors of the Fireweed Coin-Op Laundry laden with plastic shopping bags filled with gum, plastic candy despensers, more sodas, energy drinks, chips, cookies, prepackaged cakes, and a bag of pretzels they obediantly delivered to their mother (who had spent the entirety of that 15 minute repreve by staring blissfully into the undulating vortex of cotton tee-shirts and tattered sweat pants.)

The hyperactive 9 year old mulleted boy began crying and complaining that his older sister, the one in the dirty pink coat and nappy snarled blonde hair, had more candy in her bag than he did. He kicked the dryers for emphasis of his displeasure. His sister smugly reminded him that their $5 limit did not preclude them from buying multiple small items that would last longer and the father dotted the i's by explaining that he didn't need 50 feet of green apple gum, but that was his choice.

Later, while the children were haphazardly transferring wet laundry to the dryers in the back, I heard fat father chastise his children for opening and closing the dryer doors too often, and the problem with this is that warm air escaped and thus: they were wasting his money.

Now that I'm home and the air is quite and I can hear myself blink, I am imagining that families like the one I met tonight do not actually exist out there, and if they do, they're simply visting from Canada and will soon return home, leaving we peaceful AlAskAns to launder, relax, and be reasonably considerate of each other and to do it quietly, respectfully, and in peace.

I just threw up a little in my mouth, so now, with the sour taste of Corn Nuts and bile swimming between my molars, I shall shower, tend to my oral hygiene, and perhaps write a song called, "Bile on my Axe."

Peace and Love,
Mungo