City Guy In The 'Burbs

Episode Five

If you asked me what is one of the biggest advantages of living in the suburbs, probably the first thing I’d say it’s that you can do your laundry much easier.  Then, after additional consideration I’d go further and say it’s without question THE BIGGEST advantage. 

Before I lived in the suburbs doing the laundry was equivalent to one of the labors of Hercules.  You know: Slay the Nemean lion, Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis, Clean the Augean stables, Wash and Dry clothes.

When I was growing up in the city, our family was one of the lucky ones: we had a washing machine in our apartment.  (This was against policy.)  The machine was in our kitchen, wedged between the sink and the food cabinets.  This made washing our clothes easy.  But since we did not have a dryer, we had to hang our wet laundry on a metal dryer contraption, which we opened up in my parents’ bedroom.  Not only was this incredibly inconvenient for my parents, but once a week it also raised the humidity level in there to that of an athletic club steam room.

Of course, the other option was to take the laundry to a laundromat.  This was my solution when I moved out of my parents’ apartment in the mid 1970s.  I was living in the Back Bay section of Boston and every week for several years I took my dirty clothes to the laundromat.  My regular spot was The Laundromat of the Stars on Newbury Street.  It was called that because apparently several actors and actresses had done their laundry there and the machines they used were marked with plaques.  I routinely used the Gloria Swanson machine.

To do your laundry at a laundromat there are several necessities.  One, you need one of those collapsible wheeled carts to transport your laundry bag.  Two, you need to bring your own detergent since to buy it at the Laundromat will cost you an arm and a leg.  And, three, you have to have plenty of quarters.  This last point cannot be emphasized enough because the machines break down periodically and you never know when you’ll get a dryer that puts out almost negligible levels of heat, forcing you to feed quarters into the slot like a drunken Las Vegas gambler.

There aren’t many positive aspects of having to go to the laundromat.  Okay, sometimes you might meet someone interesting.  But that never happened to me.  Perhaps the most positive aspect is that you can watch people’s clothes tumble through the windows of the dryers.  For city dwellers, this can be mesmerizing, sort of like watching flames dancing in a campfire only without the sweet wood-burning smell and sound of crickets.  I’d often follow one item, like someone’s red underwear, rise, twist, and fall over and over and over.  Ah, but I reminisce.     

In the suburbs doing the laundry is much more mundane.  No crazy characters talking loudly.  No Vesuvian eruptions when some rookie puts too much detergent into the machine.  No fights over dryers.  No need to stockpile quarters.  And, of course, there is the convenience.  So, in a vote, suburban laundering gets the nod.  Definitely.