By Any Chance, Are Your Relatives From Minnesota?

Though my new apartment is a truly happy and sunny place, and though I really like it a whole bunch, it does not have an on-site washer and dryer. So, I'm back to the laundromat.

Yesterday I stepped foot in one that's a few blocks from home. Shortly after I arrived, a man approached me. "By any chance, are your relatives from Minnesota?" he asked. I smiled widely and replied, "Well, as a matter of fact, they are."

My mother was born on a farm in southern Minnesota, and most of my cousins and their kids are still living in the state.

This man, who was named Ray, thought I looked Swedish, and as a Swedish woman he'd met years ago--maybe decades ago--had been from Minnesota, he figured I might be too.

Ray wondered if I were familiar with Rush, Illinois, a town about two and a half hours from Chicago. I believe he had kept Rush in his consciousness for decades because of another gal who had hailed from there. Sad to say, I had never heard of Rush.

Ray was quite a character. Probably 85 if he was a day, wearing a sea captain's hat and pants that were way too big for him.

Turns out, Ray wss into maps. When I told my son this, he quipped, "Oh, good, so now that makes two of you."

At first Ray and I drew maps in the air for each other. I was sure that Iowa is west of the Mississippi, but Ray needed some convincing. He also needed a little help with the positions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Finally, he came around.

He said if I liked maps, he had something to show me. He pulled a Lyndon LaRouche magazine from the rack on the wall, then paused before opening it. "This publication is so right wing," he said, "I thought I might be going insane reading it." That's always been my experience of LaRouche materials and his fanatical followers.

Amidst all the political hoopla and prophesies of doom was an article on the the great train adventures of the world. Ray pointed to a map of Europe and confessed that he would like to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad some day. Wow, good for him to keep the dreams coming!

The conversation drifted to my former home of Point Arena in Mendocino County. Ray had lived in Los Angeles for 33 years, but he often went on road trips on the weekends and during his vacations. He was very familiar with Hwy 1 north of San Francisco. He nodded and took in a deep breath, remembering the beauty he had apprehended there.

All about us, solitary people went about their business, loading washers and dryers with coins and folding clothes, while Ray and I swapped stories and had a few laughs. So interesting how often this happens to me at laundramats, something I had forgotten until yesterday. So often over the years people have approached me in laundromats and told me their stories, like the woman who related the very complicated case of her run-in with city authorities or the young traveling salesman who had lived in 26 states as an adult and as many foster homes as a child.

This is why, once again, I am reminded of the truth: "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Many would say it's too bad that I don't have use of a washer and dryer in the building where I live or that I don't own a washer and dryer in my own home. But these are probably the same people who wouldn't have given Ray the time of day. Look how much I have gained from what many would label a loss.