Riding the Dryers

My memories do not rush at me as a flood., and I do not drown in them. A particular memory may be inspired by an event— a stimulation to one of my senses—and they may be somehow, even distantly connected to it. My memories start in the body and then the narrative appears constructed as a film on a cinema screen. I’m trying to understand whence this one derived. Maybe I was folding laundry.

        At college I had a room on the second floor of the fraternity house. I belonged to that brethren whose odd assortment of members consisted of Jews, social misfits, physics majors and other eccentrics. I uften spent a great deal of time studying at my desk or on the bed in my room: I was an English major and often had a great deal to read and prepare each week: novels, plays and poems. And for every class a paper was assigned. I was learning to write scholarly papers and my waste basket was filled with yellow legal pad paper. And I was very happy, in fact.

            Downstairs, before the television in the common room there were always fraternity members lounging on the couch and chairs drinking coca-colas and Dr. Peppers and not being overly concerned with the academic aspects of college. But we were all somehow “fraternal brothers” and I enjoyed their company and their repartee. They were fun and I took breaks down there if not in front of the television then in the adjoining dining area in a chair at the table drinking coffee or tea with anyone else enjoying the time and space. 

            There I could be found one late evening—maybe I was writing a paper on The Scarlet Letter or perhaps on Crime and Punishment or Lord Jim.  Or I might have been enrolled in Dr. Wise’s Shakespeare class and was therefore finishing one of the sixteen assigned plays and various sonnets. T took me about four hours to read each play and was up late (I usually went to bed earlier than the couch crowd) preparing for class. The doorbell rang and we were not a little perplexed, though unconcerned—who might be troubled to request entrance. Usually, regular residents just walked in undisturbed: physics and chemistry majors returning from the laboratories and humanities majors having left the shuttering library. Some were returning from walking their women friends back to the dorm rooms: there was on campus a curfew for both men and women but, of course, a stricter hour for the women and of course, if you wanted a kiss (I would have loved one!) then walking your date home was de rigeur. Women were not permitted beyond the social area on the first floor. and there was to be no cohabitation in the dorm section of the residence! This was, after all, a Lutheran affiliated college with a somewhat strict moral code—and the House Mother would not refrain from reporting infractions of the rules.

            Anyway, answering the knock on the door, a few but not all of us moved toward the door and opened it to whoever sought entrance. Standing outside were two young men dressed in dungarees, t-shirts and cloth winter coats—this in the era prior to the arrivals of North Face, Columbia, and Patagonia, etc. outerwear. I think that at the time I didn’t even know L.L.Bean existed. When I refer to them as young men I mean college-aged individuals such as we were. And they sheepishly smiled and said they were in search of the perfect dryer and might they attempt a spin in ours. “What?” Well, they would like to take a ride in our clothes dryer: they had the requisite quarters for the machine. Could they try a tumble in our clothes dryer. Well, why not? We showed them down to the laundry room where three washers and two dryers sat waiting. There might even have been someone down there actually doing their laundry, but at the moment the dryers were available. 

            The two males took off their winter coats and their shoes and opened the doors to the dryer. Maybe they looked about inside though I could not understand for what they might be looking. They each handed to someone near a quarter and requested that after they had climbed inside the machine would he be so kind as to deposit the quarter and shut the door to the dryer. There must have been communicated some means to stop the ride when they’d had enough, and then when safety had been arranged (?) they eagerly (!) climbed in and kneeling on the floor of the tumbler and looking out through the glass pane on the dryer’s door, they nodded their readiness to begin the test. The quarters were deposited and the dryer began to spin. They withstood the heated tumble for about thirty seconds or so, maybe they endured for even forty-five seconds, and then they voiced their safe word or motioned the signal and the door of the dryer was opened and dryer spun to a halt and the fellows climbed out. I don’t remember their evaluation of our dryers, but they thanked us for the ride, accepted our offer of Cokes or Dr. Peppers and headed out the door and down the block to the next set of dryers.

            The memory makes me smile. There was a freedom in their request and a pleasure in accepting and accommodating it. The world and my life has changed and now my dryer accepts no quarters and is too small to fit a grown body even if someone were to request a ride.