Thread Number: 15272
POD 01/03/08 Bendix -equipped Launderette 		[Down to Last]

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Post# 257379   1/3/2008 at 06:04 (5,951 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

OK, I see the high heels and hats. Now the question for the Emily Post Etiquette Institute: Are gloves required when loading the Bendix or, are they worn to the business and removed before loading the machines, like when pouring at afternoon tea? Frankly, it looks more like the wash dress and flats, bottle of CoCola and smoking stands ambience.




Post# 257389 , Reply# 1   1/3/2008 at 08:24 (5,951 days old) by gansky1 (Omaha, The Home of the TV Dinner!)        

gansky1's profile picture
I think you're right about the ambiance, Tom - especially if we fast forward to the present day...

DD Whirlpool toploaders, the smell of fruity perfumed detergents and softeners, black plastic garbage bags and Burger King wrappers strewn about and unattended babies wearing nothing but a diaper holding bottles in their teeth with what appears to be CocaCola inside.

Post# 257396 , Reply# 2   1/3/2008 at 09:15 (5,951 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

The same black plastic garbage bags in which the dirty clothes were brought to the laundry are refilled with the "clean" laundry for the trip home. When the child drops the bottle, the nipple invariably hits the floor. Momma picks it up, gives the nipple a cleansing twist with her dirty hand and plugs it back into the kid's oral cavity. The character Maggie in the Simpson family is not much of an exageration except that she is not usually making ear-splitting sounds. Unfortunately this is not just in the coin laundry, but every public venue with obnoxiously loud talking by adults and their progeny, along with whining, crying or screaming brats sometimes racing around endangering themselves and, what's worse, others who are innocently going about their business. I listen to these crying children with oblivious mothers on the train and have fantasies of walking up to them with a wide roll of clear first aid tape to seal their mouths until they leave the car; the same for the ignorant or drunken people who sit on opposite sides of the car and shout back and forth as they carry on long conversations or the pride of our educational systems who use their time on the train to loudly practice profanity or their drumming on any resonant surface while wrestling each other and lurching about the moving car. This theater is very effective when the actors are wearing their religious school uniforms, climactically so (you should pardon the expression) when the parts of the uniform are stretched across pregnant bellies.

The ladies of the Launderette arriving in high heels and dress coats would never have believed the results of 50 or 60 years of social progress.

Post# 257447 , Reply# 3   1/3/2008 at 14:10 (5,951 days old) by jaxsunst ()        

What is "Telecoin"?

Post# 257458 , Reply# 4   1/3/2008 at 15:39 (5,951 days old) by retro-man (- boston,ma)        

So after looking at todays pod I have a question. Did they just have washing machines in the laundette back then, or were there dryers available for the drying sequence,or did they pack the wet clothes and bring them home and hang them out? I don't see how you could get all the laundry done in 30 minutes unless they were still wet. Were there dryers back then when these bendix machines came out?

Post# 257872 , Reply# 5   1/5/2008 at 12:15 (5,949 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

Yes, there were dryers. There were dryers before automatic washers. There was a Bendix-equipped laundry near a super market where we went from time to time. It was not coin operated. The Bendix washers were along one wall, the dryers opposite them and a big extractor at the back. Several Bendix loads, usually a customer's laundry would fit in the extractor and in one dryer. Up at the front was the service counter and big shelves where the completed laundry waited in big brown paper wrapped bundles. The place was always super busy on Saturdays. In the 8th grade I found out that the laundry was owned by the father of a guy in my class. You could choose different levels of service, the most basic of which was called wet wash and that was straight out of the Bendix for you to take home and put on the line. I guess for a bit more, you could have it put through the extractor, but unless you were using a dryer that meant more wrinkles. The original bolt down Bendix washers did not spin all that well nor, truth be known, did they wash or rinse all that well either, but part of their advertising was the point that the machine left the laundry with just the proper amount of moisture so that the sun could bleach the laundry while it was drying on the line.


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