Saturday, November 8, 2008

Doing Laundry and another Superchiken adventure


When my mom and dad broke up.

I was told that I was going to be the one doing the laundry.

I would get all clothes for my mom and brother and me and load it all up on my board and roll it down to City Terrace drive to the Coinwash(Laundromat) pictured above.

The most I was ever involved in doing the laudry was going to get my mom detergent from the Mercado Hidalgo or Plaza Market.

I did not know how to do the laundry.

My mom told me to read the labels and wash it like the labels said.....she said white with whites and black with blacks...and don't put bleach on the blacks.

She did not say anything about the lights..so I put all the lightest lights with the darks and the lightest with the whites.

She did not tell me anything about how the cold setting is for the blacks and the hot for whites or anything like that...

So I figured I would play it safe and I put all the clothes on the warm setting.

Needless to say it was not a good first attempt.

Some clothes shrunk...some lights got bleached and some whites did not get washed the way they should of been washed.

I was told that I needed to try again, My mom said she had told me how to wash the clothes many times and she did (But I was too busy reading my skateboard magazines or skating outside to care about laundry or how to do it)

One day on my way to the Laundromat I had my board all loaded up and was rolling down the hill trying to keep it from going away from me....when my friend Superchicken rolled up and said that he would go with me to the laundromat.

I told him I could not skate , I had to do the laundry......He said ....let's go I will show you how to do it fast.

We got there and he got the big cart and separated the clothes into....black, white, lights and other.....

Then we loaded the washers and he taught me how the whites go with hot water and Bleach (I was not using it properly or at all before) I would use the bleach money to buy my cheetos and Orange Crush....

He told me how the blacks go with the cold water and no bleach....then the lights with the darks only if there was not enough cash to wash it seperately... and to use warm water when washing lights on their own .....

I was told that for the others I had to read the labels and see what those clothes needed....some said hand wash seperate....(We put those in bag to send back home) then some said dry clean only (Those went back home also) then on the others it was just a matter or sorting out where it should go in the washers that were already loaded.....some needed their own small washer and he showed me how to take care of those.

While loading it up he showed me how to flip over the clothes (so the jeans would not fade)

He laughed at some of my mom's chonies and mostly mine...but that was a small price to pay ....for what I was learning.

Then he laughed at some of the clothes that I washed on my own before and saw that one of my skateshirts was bleached and said he would show me how to make designs in it with bleach and he did at home by tying rubber bands into the shirt and washing it in bleach with the whites.

The laundromat was run by a older man that looked like he was in the military in the past...he reminded me alot of Chilindrinas dad...he was tall and skinny and always looked like he was mad....but the laundromat was next to these apartments that had a bad reputation so I figured he had to deal with alot of crap from the residents most of the time.

While washing the clothes Superchicken asked me for the fabric softener, I had never used it and told him I did not even know what it was for....I did not have any money for it but he told me how to use and that he would help me next time and to make sure I had my mom buy some , cause it made a difference in how the clothes turned out.

He taught me how to sort out the clothes in the dryer and how many dryer sheets to put in it....I had enough money for those.

When I did the laundry by myself I would just throw it all in the dryer (No fabric sheets) and just keep adding quarters until it all was dry.

Superchicken started sorting all the clothes in how it would dry fastest.....jeans in one dryer...lights in another and misc in another.

He started opening up the dryers in between quarters and started taking clothes out as it dried...and then he asked me for hangers and I did not have any(He told me that I needed to bring hangers).....he showed me how to fold the clothes and we put it all back in the trashbags.

Then he took one of the Laundry carts and started loading it....(We were not suppose take the laundry cart out cause they had these tall poles on them so that they could not be rolled out of the laudromat) But he showed me how to get it out and I did....loaded up the cart and rolled up Van Pelt to my home....I was happy we did the laundry in half the time and I had a pocket full of quarters left over from not using it all for the dryers.

On our next trip he showed me how to put in on the hangers instead of folding everything, It made everything alot easier.

My mom did not like Superchicken when we first became friends because she thought that he would be a bad influence....but she never complained about him after that...

It saved me alot of money the way he showed me to do the laundry and was alot faster.....

Evilchavo Out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Superchicken? That's an odd name. I always thought he was just a crazy person that roamed the streets. That was a nice story, though.