Bob Dunning: Can a compromise wash away closure?

VITAL SERVICE WASHED AWAY … I walked the three blocks from my humble East Davis home to our neighborhood laundromat, the Wash Mill, Monday afternoon and was pleased to see it was still open and operating despite reports it was closing for good the day before … this after providing a valuable service to a wide variety of customers for the last 40 years … our family has used this neighborhood treasure off and on over the years and always found it to be efficient, comfortable, affordable and customer-oriented … given that the impending closure leaves a number of people with very few clothes-washing options, it’s a sad day indeed …

The space, combined with that vacated recently by All Things Right & Relevant, will be taken over by a Goodwill store, but trust me, this is not the kind of adverse publicity the folks at Goodwill anticipated … as its name suggests, Goodwill does much good in our society, even if it’s being cast as the villain here … if there’s still time — and Goodwill and the out-of-town landlord are willing — it might be good for everyone to sit down and see if Goodwill can make an exception to its space requirement by agreeing to operate its store with fewer square feet than planned, thus leaving the Wash Mill intact …

Hopefully, our city fathers and mothers are working at this very moment to facilitate just such a meeting …

EVEN MORE WASH DAY NEWS … the Davis Manor Shopping Center where the Wash Mill is located has historically struggled to attract both viable businesses and customers … it is not in any way, shape or form “busy” … ever … this despite the fact it does house the hugely popular Symposium, simply the best Greek restaurant in North America … it’s hard to blame a landlord for wishing to have full occupancy, which is exactly what Goodwill will provide … it’s also hard to blame Goodwill for wanting to do business in a neighborhood where rents are much more affordable … and it’s hard to blame our cash-strapped city for being too occupied with other issues to see this one coming … then again, there’s always hope … where there’s a Goodwill, there’s a way …

THERE’S ALWAYS A FAMILY CONNECTION … given that I met the Red-Headed Girl of My Dreams in a steamy laundromat in Northern Idaho, I have a special fondness for just about any laundromat anywhere … and when I walked into the Wash Mill yesterday to see if its machines were still humming, I was reminded that my oldest son Ted, the Cal graduate, put his higher education to use by working there for a while shortly after graduation …

Ted reports he has never had a job where his responsibilities were fewer … “I think I broke a five-dollar bill once so someone could get quarters to use a machine, but that’s it,” he tells me … he adds he “began and finished Ayn Rand’s ‘Fountainhead’ entirely on-shift during my stint in the garment sanitation industry.” … the kid always did have a way with words … and if the Wash Mill helped him pay the bills while he determined the wonderful direction he ultimately would take with his life, I owe them my everlasting gratitude …

A SOLUTION IS AT HAND … while there has been much hand-wringing about what can be done, should be done and might be done in regard to the Wash Mill’s fate, there’s an incredibly easy and practical short-term solution for those who truly care about the folks who suddenly have no place to launder locally … given that most of us in the neighborhood have washing machines and dryers and an automobile in working order, why not band together and offer to wash and dry and deliver the clothes of those who have no option to do so? …

I realize laundry tends to be personal, so if that plan is not satisfactory, we can at least provide rides to those who don’t have the means to get their laundry across town to the very excellent Laundry Lounge tucked into the shopping center at Anderson and Covell … maybe that will help to change the Tide and put a Bounce in everyone’s step …

SPEAKING OF TIDE … bless me father for I have sinned … when I picked Notre Dame to beat Alabama for the national championship, I put my faith in leprechauns, rabbits’ feet and the luck of the Irish … if those two teams played 10 times, Alabama would win all 10, with no game closer than three touchdowns … there were no turning points in the game after Notre Dame won the coin toss and inexplicably allowed Alabama to have the ball first … it was all downhill after that …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net