Laundry Days

I remember laundry days. They almost always happened on Sundays in the morning, while everyone else seemed to be at church, well, everyone else from our block anyway. We would head down to the laundromat on Baltimore Avenue, pushing along the little Chinese folding laundry cart full of our dirty clothes in garbage bags. I’m not sure if we just didn’t have enough money for mesh laundry bags, or if my mother was trying to make a statement, but every time I think of laundry days, the clothes were always in large green lawn and leaf bags, rolling down the street in that Chinese folding laundry cart.

My sister and I would make up games during the trips to and from the laundromat. After all, Baltimore Avenue was about nine blocks away from our house (if you took the short way), and we would pass by many landmarks along the way. Well, at least they were landmarks for us. There was the Seventh-Day Adventist church on the left. Ironic, since we were Seventh-Day Adventists but we traveled all the way across Philly every week to go to a different SDA church. Then there was the bread place. I always called it just the bread place. Every once in awhile my mom would send us there to pick up a dozen kaiser rolls, and the man at the counter would give us 13 instead. I never did figure out what a baker’s dozen was back then, but I sure appreciated that 13th roll. There was also the library, which always closed early on Sundays. And finally up on the right directly before we made the turn onto Baltimore Avenue was Checkers, the flyest fast food joint in the area. Our games would generally center around the colors of cars along the route, how many buses would pass by, whether or not anyone would be parked at the church, and if the Checkers would smell like french fries or fried chicken.

Right across the street from the laundromat was a Chinese corner store/mart. I never really understood the difference between a corner store and a mart, but whichever it was, it was always strange to see in a primarily black neighborhood. As a stark juxtaposition, outside in front of the corner store was a fella I would call “brutha man.” He had his booth set up every time I would pass through, and I wondered if he ever slept. And he was his own corner store because he sold everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. From sunglasses, to gold chains (no way were they real), to fur hats, to pirated video tapes, to pirated audiotapes, to toys. He was a one-stop shop, and if you didn’t see it there, he could get it for you. He often had the latest movies on the day they came out in the theater, and I always wondered how he did it. Periodically the owner of the Chinese corner mart would come out of his store and just stare at brutha man, like they were at war, and I guess to him they were, but brutha man must have greased the palms of the local police because they never stopped him from selling at that spot.

On laundry days I would sometimes push the cart, but it was usually my sister doing it. She is fifteen months older than me, but she always called me her little brother. I think that’s because she knew how much I detested it. I felt older, even then, but my mother would let her push the cart anyway. Of course I also had the little stubby legs so it was harder for me to do it, but you know how it is. I still wanted it, and every once in awhile I got to do it. I was happiest those times. So, we would get to the laundromat and everyone had a job to do. While my mother was separating the clothes on the counter, my sister would be in charge of grabbing a couple of four-wheeled carts from where they were gathered in the corner, and I would be given the dollar bills and sent off to the change machine. I liked it over at the change machine because it was magical to me. After feeding the dollars into the slot, just hearing the coins clitter clatter down the chute in a glorious symphony, then come gushing out in a waterfall into the tray, it was beautiful. I wouldn’t have traded that job for anything.

While my mother started putting the clothes in the washer, my sister and I would be divvy up two dollars worth of quarters between us. It was our chance to play the new-fangled video game machines that we had discovered not too long before. They had taken up residence in the opposite corner from the carts. One of them was the classic PacMan game, where the little yellow open-mouthed guy went around in a schizophrenic rush eating dots and getting chased by multi-colored ghosts. But I wasn’t really concerned with that one. I would let my sister have her turn with it if she wanted. What really caught my eye, though, was the other, newer game machine, the one with the plumber brothers emblazoned on its side. From the moment I first saw it in the laundromat I was hooked. I would use all of my money for weeks on that game, trying to get better, trying to win. And eventually I did win, but that’s neither here nor there now. Back then all that mattered was playing, playing, and playing some more.

My mother would read her books while the laundry was spinning in the machines, and while we were playing our video games. I remember her sitting in that hard plastic chair (what makes me think it was orange?), taking out whatever she was using as a bookmark from the page she was saving, and she would be lost in that world. Until the buzzer went off on the first washing machine and she would have to rotate the clothing. Then she was back to her book, and we might as well not have existed. Now, I knew she had her way of knowing when we were doing something we shouldn’t have, so she wasn’t negligent, and I was the same way when I read too. I liked that she had her own fun while we were there, because too often I felt like my mom had way too much to handle, and she always seemed stressed. But that one day a week, on laundry day, she would relax, even when she was doing work. It was our home away from home, that laundromat on Baltimore Avenue.

And I bet brutha man is still standing out there on that corner, selling his wares, waiting for us to head back home, trucking that Chinese folding laundry cart, and smelling the fried chicken from Checkers as we passed.

Sam