{"id":11210,"date":"2025-06-09T06:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T13:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=9442"},"modified":"2025-06-09T06:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T13:50:10","slug":"laundromat-meditations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/laundromat-meditations\/","title":{"rendered":"Laundromat Meditations"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a good place to write. Sturdy wooden table. Tile floors. Led Zeppelin pinball machine. A library (surprisingly no <em>Bible<\/em>). The sound of the industrial washers and dryers mutes the terrible 70s\/80s rock playing on a boombox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Quarters only. The machines won&#8217;t take bills or debit card. No WI-Fi either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A young woman is reading a book about color composition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A young obese couple is eating fast food and drinking huge sodas from the convenience store a block away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The employee who runs this operation runs a very tight ship. I just thanked him for keeping it clean. His boxer follows him around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Outside, homeless men and women pass by on a regular basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stashed one of my books in the library. Why not? It might remain there for a quarter century before anyone reads it or reads it at all. Where will this nation be in 25 years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most customers don&#8217;t hang out inside. They play with their phones out in their vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have been thinking about purchasing a washer and dryer for the house, but don&#8217;t mind coming here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Who owns this laundromat? How does one get into this kind of business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We know so little about how a vast majority of Americans earn a living. Writers don&#8217;t write enough about modern American jobs. The same could be say for musicians or visual artists. The Democratic Party follows this same line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Was \u201cTakin&#8217; Care of Business\u201d the last great rock song about work? Springsteen used to write a lot of songs about work. (\u201cThe Factory\u201d and \u201cWorking on the Highway\u201d come to mind.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just remembered Glen Campbell&#8217;s \u201cWichita Lineman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My agenda after the laundromat: mow front lawn, build shelves, take Elmer to the beach (third time), read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I continue to think about my father&#8217;s death, certainly not in some traumatic way. Just remembrances. These thoughts typically emerge when I am performing manual labor. I can&#8217;t truly let him go until I wrap up estate matters with the kind of alacrity he taught me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Total cost of this visit: $6.50.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a good place to write. Sturdy wooden table. Tile floors. Led Zeppelin pinball machine. A library (surprisingly no Bible). The sound of the industrial washers and dryers mutes the terrible 70s\/80s rock playing on a boombox. Quarters only. The machines won&#8217;t take bills or debit card. No WI-Fi either. A young woman is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coos-bay","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}