On the map, Lake Havasu looks like a thriving metropolitan
area. Not true. Three days has been enough to show that it’s just another Redneckville,
expanded by the tourist army that comes to gawk at London Bridge and then move
on, perhaps wondering if anyone ever stopped before the bridge arrived.
It’s reached the point in the week where I either have to wash
my clothes or buy some more and, believe me, there have been times when that
was a valid choice. Not now though, so I need a laundromat.
Despite Verizon’s claims about nationwide coverage with
their big red map, something happens as soon as you leave large centers of
population. Google Search develops a form of insanity if it can’t find what
it’s looking for. Yesterday, a simple search for coffee shops delivered an ice
cream shop and a gas station but failed to find the Starbucks where I was
actually sitting.
I’d prefer the thing admitted it couldn’t get a hit, or apologized
that the nearest is a thousand miles away, rather than this insistence on making
stuff up. This time, asking for a laundromat actually finds one – in addition
to a local hospice. Technology – isn’t it wonderful?
Driving down the road, the sexy Google voice sends me to a Chevron
station topped by a giant wooden sign in the shape of a pointing finger declaring
“Laundromat, Gas and Deli.” I’ve decided I’m in love with Miss Google. She
always gets me to where I’m going and never loses her temper when I screw up
and go the wrong way. The perfect woman, really. I wish I knew her name.
The gas pumps are obvious and the car’s thirsty so I deal
with that. John Wayne’s rule number one
was always look after your horse first – or was that Clint Eastwood? Someone
with a gun and a mean way with words, anyway. After a circuit of the gas
station there’s no sign of the laundromat, nor any further reference to it,
just that giant wooden finger.
I have to break a cardinal rule and go inside to ask. It’s
not fear of admitting failure, just that experience has shown 90% of people who
don’t have the answer will make something up. Very Fox-News.
“It’s right there,” says a chunky brunette, pointing vaguely
towards a spot where the corner of the wall meets the ceiling. “The next door
around the corner.” Her attitude is one of wonderment and the tingle of irritation
begins to climb up my back.
Outside again, I collect the laundry bag and follow her
directions to a door covered entirely by a Mountain Dew poster but otherwise
unmarked. Is this it? Why the mystery? Why is there no indication of what lies
beyond? Why would someone go to these lengths to keep a normal business a
secret? It can’t be an accident unless the owners are stupid. Is there a
speakeasy in there? Are they distilling illicit whisky or gin?
I’m hesitant to open it and burst in on a surprised threesome
having an orgy, but it’s the only door so I do. Inside there’s a spacious
laundromat, complete with three large couches and a widescreen TV showing the
shopping channel with the volume at a level needed by deaf people. I suppose
the couches could be used for an orgy but, at the moment, there’s only an old
man draped over one of them in a manner suggesting that he’s dead.
This must be the only laundromat in the whole of the country
that has no change machine. In England, where anything that might contain money
would be immediately stolen, that’s the norm, but not here. Laundromats, like
diners, are an American way of life and generally they do them well, so this is
truly surprising.
The only solution is another interaction with the deli
brunette, which is also a good excuse to get some greasy food from the deli. Whilst
paying for potato wedges and a fried object that might once have been meat
rolled in a tortilla, I make the mistake of mentioning that a sign on the laundromat
door would have been helpful. It was only a light-hearted comment but, almost
imperceptibly, her shoulders rise and her eyebrows furrow like a cat about to
pounce on a mouse. “Everyone knows where it is,” she says, as though I’d just insulted
NASCAR. “It’s obvious.”
It’s not obvious, of course, but I have enough sense to
leave it at fifteen-love. People use that word way too much, usually to
describe something that only they know.
It takes half an hour for the wash and the dryer promises
fifty minutes, but the TV is so mind numbingly raucous in its attempts to demonstrate
merchandise not available in stores that I spend the time wandering around
outside, watching the antics of drivers trying to park. It shouldn’t be hard,
if they just observed courtesy and used a small percentage of brain, but that
seems to be the problem.
A yellow Mustang’s diagonally across two spaces and encroaching
onto a third and I watch a guy in his backwards baseball cap and sleeveless
plaid shirt, cutting off a minivan to reverse his house-sized truck into a spot
clearly marked by a handicap sign and blue curb markings. Is it that he didn’t
read, couldn’t read or simply doesn’t give a shit? Probably the latter, but I
can’t rule out at least one of the other possibilities.
After fifty minutes, I go to retrieve the clothes, which are
hotter than one would expect. So hot, in fact, that I have to vigorously shake
each item and then drop it back to avoid losing my fingerprints. It might be
possible to cook an egg on the belt buckle and the jeans look like they’d been
ridden hard and put away wet. Three tee-shirts are burned with large charred
holes – but I can’t face the prospect of complaining to the brunette next door,
so I mentally shrug, push everything back into the laundry bag, throw it into
the car and drive away.
C’est la vie…
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