My goodness gracious how far we have come with civilization so that we can blog from the laundromat? It used to be that people communally doing their laundry could do something like … read or watch soap operas or even … in extreme circumstances, talk.
With a good portion of my young Navy days spent in pursuit of women and beer to drink, it was almost heaven minus West Virginia when I realized a bar down the street from the Seabee base in Gulfport two-fered as a laundromat and bar. I believe the establishment was named “John’s Laundromat and Bar.” Some of the even more hardcore among my young friends but more so among the old-timers was delighted by the fact that John’s opened at 7 a.m. I used to like beer but only winding down a day at 7 a.m. and not starting the day with the so-called “Breakfast of Champions.”
It is funny, however, that once I got into a bachelor enlisted quarters (a.k.a. barracks) with a washer-dryer, going to John’s went out the window because those were the 1970s, the heady days of 35-cent beer in the barracks vending machines.
No matter how easy the Navy use to make it for both doing laundry and heading straight down a pathway toward substance abuse, I never found a particular fancy for washing my clothes. I did continue drinking beer and will drink one every now and then these days.
A lot of talking heads have pontificated upon how this plugged-in, wired-up, dialed-out society of ours is losing interpersonal communication as an important part of what makes a civilization functional. That might well be. Although one may also argue that the explosion of technology gives each other the ability to communicate with each other like never before. I, for instance, keep up with family and friends much better than in the past especially because of the Internet. And those same people can keep up with me either through e-mail, to a lesser extent cellular or occasionally even through my blog although that is not the primary purpose of this site. I no longer bother warning any of them of looking into my world at their own peril. My relatives especially will likely read and have read my points of view, some of which they vehemently disagree. But just like I tell any other cyber voyeur who happens to pass by, the same road that leads into this place leads out. This is my spot, my space if you will, that has been staked out on the great Internet Prairie.
With that said, I think I better see if my clothes are ready to dry. If technology could only make laundry no longer a necessity then I suppose we will have reached Ne’er do well Nirvana. I am willing to give it a try, however.