Laundromat of Life

The sign above the doorway sputtered and blinked—SUNSHINE COIN LAUNDRY—flickering neon lights that buzzed like weary cicadas. Sunshine had nothing to do with the place and precious little to do with the morning outside.

I pushed through the aluminum‑framed glass door with a hip check—it stuck in the humidity—and felt the warm, lint-thick air wrap itself around me like a damp quilt. A bell gave a half‑hearted ding, then surrendered to the heavier music of whirring drums, rattling quarters, and the slow cough of fluorescent tubes straining against their age.

1

On the road you measure life in miles and engine noise, but every so often a man has to reckon with the smaller arithmetic of socks and T-shirts. My reckoning came on a raw Sunday somewhere between the Missouri River and memory, after three weeks of gravel lots, greasy diners, and restless sleep inside Josie’s Assuan‑brown shell. I could smell myself before I stepped from the driver’s seat; the clothes in my duffle had begun to stage a rebellion.

Inside, twenty‑odd washers sat like squat soldiers in two tired rows, enamel chipped, coin slots greasy from ghostly fingers. Above them a hand‑lettered sign read NO DYING CLOTHES IN MACHINES—the absent “e” a warning and a prophecy. Someone had underlined it three times in red marker, the color bleeding with each pass, as though the writer feared the message might fade the same way customers did, load after load, swirl after swirl, until only a faint outline of themselves remained.

A little heat still clung to the night, yet the ceiling vents expelled nothing but a sigh. Far back, near the vending machines that promised “SOAP • SOFTENER • HOPE” for $1.25 in quarters, two gray plastic chairs had surrendered to gravity. I chose the least cracked one and let my bag slump beside me.

2

Every laundromat has its cast of temporary exiles: the night‑shift nurse nodding over mystery paperbacks; the divorced father folding Spider‑Man pajamas with military precision; the wide-eyed graduate student who believes the plaque that says FREE WIFI will mean something. This morning’s troupe was smaller than most, but no less human.

• A rail‑thin man in a Royals cap stood guard by machine #7, eyes darting from tumbling jeans to the exit and back again, as though afraid the door might close forever if he looked away too long.
  
  
• A mother with two toddlers corralled her young like a weary border collie, the children orbiting the rolling baskets in sugar‑fueled delirium.
  
  
• And in the far corner, beneath a poster that once depicted a tropical beach but now looked as bleached and brittle as bad parchment, sat a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had erected a card table of pamphlets—WATCHTOWER, AWAKE!, salvation spelled out in eight‑point type—but their thumbs worked phone screens with the zeal of parishioners at a digital altar. Candy Crush salvation.
  
  

Not one of them met another’s gaze for more than a heartbeat. It was as if we each occupied our own transparent cubicle, soundproofed by exhaustion and the hypnotic churn of soapy water.

Outside, the sky was the color of a brackish pond. Rain threatened. I thought of Josie parked outside, her gutters clogged with seed husks and Midwestern dust. She would enjoy the bath. I, however, remained unconvinced.

3

The ritual began:
Four dollars in quarters clattered into the stainless‑steel throat of washer #12. Shirts, socks, underwear—evidence of road and sweat—spiraled into the tub.
A scoop of cheap powder, blue as robin eggs, followed like sacrificial snow. I slammed the lid. A moment later the machine shuddered awake, water sputtering through tired valves. The sound reminded me of distant irrigation, of fields where sprinklers tick‑ticked across soy like metronomes for growing things.

A man becomes a philosopher when he can do nothing but wait. I propped a foot on my duffle, tried to read yesterday’s newspaper, failed, and instead watched the spin cycle of strangers. The Royals‑cap fellow finally relaxed his shoulders; perhaps machine #7 had stopped threatening to eat his quarters. The toddlers discovered that the squeaky cart wheels made excellent engines for an imaginary train, their mother too spent to scold them. The Witnesses laughed at something on a shared screen, the stack of tracts untouched.

4

I pulled a small notebook from my pocket—the same one that has collected county names, diner recipes, and the addresses of kind strangers who handed me peaches from porch swings. The pen hesitated before I wrote:

"Laundry teaches patience; patience teaches listening; listening teaches story."

A simple line, perhaps too earnest, but in the smell of bleach and warmed lint it felt profound.

Weeks earlier the road had been crisp with purpose: drive, interview, photograph, write—repeat. Lately, with coughs graveling in my chest and Josie coughing her own metallic phlegm, purpose had collapsed into survival. Yet here, amid humming motors and coin‑box dirges, I sensed a different kind of purpose fermenting: the necessity of being still long enough for clarity to find me.

5

The Royals fan approached, balancing an armload of damp denim. He nodded at my sneakers, the Kansas grit still clinging to the soles. “You been traveling,” he said—not a question. I offered the brief version: Carolinas to Ohio, then west and south, stories traded like seeds. His face softened. He said he drove long‑haul for fifteen years, saw every truck stop lounge from here to Laredo. “But you don’t really see,” he admitted. “Not when the freight’s late and dispatch is barking in your ear.” Now he repairs combines for a dealership. Less road, more grease under the nails. We spoke of harvest schedules and the price of diesel until his dryer dinged and he excused himself with a gentle “good luck out there.”

Connection—thin filament, quickly snapped, but connection all the same.

6

My own washer finished. I transferred the wet bundle to a dryer and fed it a buck seventy-five. The machine roared to life, hot breath fogging the glass door until my reflection blurred. In that ghost shape I recognized the wear this journey had carved: hollowed cheeks, eyes twelve shades beyond tired. A man cannot outrun mirrors forever.

And then, in the lull between dryer start‑up and realization, I felt it: hunger. Not the romantic hunger of spiritual longing, but the pedestrian gnaw that says coffee, eggs, toast—now. I wandered to the vending machine, bought a honey bun near its expiration date. The first bite was cloying, the second necessary, the third a reminder that pleasure and necessity often taste alike when your belly is empty.

7

Somewhere overhead the fluorescent bulb nearest my seat began to flutter. Light, dark, light, dark—the cadence of a heartbeat too anxious for its own good. No one else seemed to notice. Perhaps they had grown accustomed; perhaps they had accepted the flaw as a feature.

I wondered if the laundromat was Josie’s dry‑land cousin—another place where mechanical faithfulness fought daily against rust and fatigue. Maybe every human institution is just that: an aging washer, held together by faith, quarters, and the stubborn refusal to quit spinning.

8

Forty minutes later the dryer buzzed. Warm cotton filled the basket, steam ghosting upward. I folded with deliberation—the road teaches economy but also reverence for the small luxury of a fresh shirt. Each crease felt like preparation, like telling tomorrow I am ready for you, even if my engine coughs and my lungs protest.

The toddlers waved goodbye, the mother mouthed a tired thank you for… what? Perhaps for bearing witness to her small chaos without judgment. The Royals fan was gone, leaving a faint smell of dryer sheets and diesel memories. The Witnesses packed up silently, their day’s ministry accomplished entirely in digital epistles.

9

Outside, the rain had not materialized, but a pewter sky promised it still might. I loaded the duffle into Josie’s rear hatch, patted the dashboard. “Clean laundry, old girl. Let’s try not to add new stains too quickly.” She responded with a grudging starter click that smoothed into a mellow idle—like an old dog agreeing to another walk despite the aching hips.

Pulling from the lot I caught the neon sign in the side mirror. SUNSHI—E COIN LA—DRY, two letters finally surrendered to entropy. Maybe next time they would be replaced. Maybe not.

The highway yawned ahead, two faded yellow lines leading to stories yet uncollected. My clothes were clean, my soul perhaps a shade less so, but both were lighter than they had been at dawn. In the grand ledger of miles and moments, a laundromat Sunday would read as small print, but without such commas the sentence of travel becomes unreadable.

I downshifted, rolled the window, let prairie wind tangle the steam still rising from the vents. The road, like a patient teacher, whispered: Even the mundane is sacred when you bother to notice.

I promised to remember.