April 19, 2019
Dear Everyone:
After nine years
of more-or-less faithful service, my clothes dryer conked out last week.
It still runs, but without any heat.
This slows down the drying process significantly.
Truth to tell, I
had noticed lately that it was taking longer to dry clothes than it had
in the past. I tentatively
placed the blame on the fact that I have never had the vent cleaned out,
something you’re supposed to do about once each year.
But let’s face
it, the world is filled with things we’re “supposed” to do that we never
get around to doing. Going
to the gym regularly leaps immediately to mind.
As it happens,
the heating element had burned out, so the repairman told me, and needed
to be replaced. He has
ordered one and expects it to arrive some time next week.
In the meantime, no dryer.
Of course, “Back
in The Good Old Days” no one had a dryer.
You washed your clothing, then hung it outside on a clothesline
and hoped for the best.
Hoped it would dry before nightfall.
Hoped it wouldn’t rain.
Hoped the little birds would choose to perch and drop their crap
somewhere else.
If you lived in a
apartment, it was a good way to meet your neighbors.
Our mother once told me about a time, shortly after World War II,
when she was hanging the clothes out to dry, along with her next-door
neighbor.
While chatting
about this, that and the other, the woman casually asked when the baby
was due. Mother pondered how
the neighbor knew she was pregnant when she hadn’t told anyone the happy
news yet. The neighbor
replied, “I can hear you throwing up in the bathroom every morning.”
Later, that same
neighbor volunteered to babysit when our parents chose to go out for an
evening. The neighbor didn’t
even have to leave her apartment.
If one of the babies woke up and started crying, she would hear
it immediately, then go and check on the problem.
Actually, living
in a condominium means never hanging your wash out to dry.
It is specifically spelled out in the CC&Rs.
No clotheslines, no drying racks that are visible to anyone
outside your patio. They
even sent out a newsletter advising residents to “please stop hanging
your pool towels on the patio fence.”
So unsightly!
When I first
moved to San Ramon, I discovered that the electrical cord on my dryer
didn’t reach the outlet provided in the laundry closet.
It was a couple of weeks before I could procure a proper-length
cord and have a co-worker’s husband switch it out for me.
In the meantime,
I needed a coin-operated laundry.
Which is when I found out that there are no laundries in San
Ramon. A few dry cleaners,
yes. But no place to
actually do your own laundry.
The nearest place
turned out to be in nearby Dublin, about seven miles away.
That was 22 years ago.
(Gasp! I’ve lived in
San Ramon for 22 years? How
did that happen?)
The laundry had
moved, but was still operating in Dublin.
Yesterday, I ran four loads of wash.
Then I bundled all the wet clothing, bed linens, towels, etc.
into the car and dragged it all down to the “Ducky Wash and Dry”.
It turns out that
their dryers are quite cavernous, to say the least, and can easily
accommodate three to four loads of wet wash, provided everything calls
for the same temperature. A
quarter buys five minutes of drying time.
$2.50 and a half-hour later, I bundled everything back into the
car and drove home.
It might be
considered a time saver, of sorts.
Unless you count the half-hour to drive there and the half-hour
to drive back. And, of
course, you can’t do anything else but hang around the laundry, waiting
for the dryer(s) to finish.
I keep telling
myself that this is temporary.
And it’s only an inconvenience.
No one is dropping bombs on my head.
I just have to arrange my schedule around doing laundry, instead
of doing laundry whenever it’s convenient for me.
For a while.
Then everything
will go back to normal again.
Until the next Crisis du Jour, of course.
Love, as always,
Pete
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