Welcome to the Rodney Street Laundry & Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen

December 2, 2006

With some trepidation I start this blog. Like a lot of things that I put off, this task has grown larger in my mind than it needs to be, especially since those of you who will read this first round are so supportive. I was determined to set this up two weeks ago but once I had looked online at all the options for blog templates, I had forgotten why it was I was going to do a blog and took a nap instead. But my friend DD gave me a pep talk yesterday so here I am. My goal is to post once a week from the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen where I’ve been the writer-in-residence since April, 2005, about a year after I moved to Helena, Montana, from Chicago and Texas before that. You don’t have to name the city your from in Texas cause it’s just Texas, ‘nough said. –except to say that even though George W. claims TX as home, the Lone Star State has also bred such treasures as Ann Richards, Willie Nelson, Molly Ivins and Larry McMurtry. So there.
When I first started my residency –which by the way was kindly allowed by the Laundry owners Sandy Shull and Jacquie Gibson and supported by the sandwich shop business owner Sambo-- I came over to the laundromat at least once a week for several hours. Now I’m doing well to get here for a few hours each week but I’ve turned over a new page and am here now. One aspect of this blog is to have interaction with you readers so please figure out how to write comments so we can create a conversation and let me know that you are out there.
The idea of being the resident writer was not to live at the laundry as some have asked me but to sit here and listen to people’s stories. Some solicited but most from people working and waiting on their laundry that sit down to chat. I hang in the street windows two yellow laminated signs that read “WRITER IS IN’ when I come in to write. They spur some curiosity, my Golden Retriever is often with me and she is also a conversation started, and sitting, writing in a journal attracts people. Mostly though, for some reason people just want to share their stories with me even before they know why I’m here. I do tell them what I’m doing especially if the story seems like something I’d like to include in the book of stories that I’m writing. That way I get their permission. Otherwise, I just eavesdrop. Then there are the simple interludes like one woman asked me what I was doing here and I answered that I came here to write. When she got up to put her wet clothes into the dryer she turned to me and said, “Don’t you have a TV at home?”
Sometimes I feel like the village letter writer for those that think that they can’t write –something that people often mention, “I’ve always wanted to write this down.” So I am a recorder of stories that people feel compelled to tell but would not write down themselves. So far I’ve talked to a man who had just returned from serving in the Army Reserve in Iraq, an artist that hangs out with "the other ghouls" at the scary bar, Jesters, across the street (when he found out that I was lesbian he said, "Everybody's turning queer"), and a Holiday Inn launderer who was using the dryers at the laundry because the ones at work were broken. From New Jersey, he used to be in a rock band and once jammed with Bruce Springstein's band.
For those unfamiliar with the Laundry, it is in the three-block "hood" in Helena complete with meth trade and the Department of Corrections probation office. It's good to centralize. Other businesses include Jesters Bar, B&B grocery (both with apartments for rent upstairs), pawn shop, lawyers offices, funeral home, low-income housing, and various other county offices like the coroner’s. All this is smack dab in the historic Rodney Street neighborhood, quite the prime real estate at inception and growing more so once again. The Laundry’s red brick building houses about 20 washers and 10 dryers (but you want to use the big ones cause they dry faster) in the front and a four-table and three-stool-counter lunchroom in the back, grounded with a (retro from the youngsters’ perspective) black-and-white checkered floor. Around the corner from the tables is the kitchen, about twelve feet in length, wide enough for two people to closely get by each other to prepare food and take orders, and divided from the eating area by the jailhouse-barred order window. Only thing left to the building is a large bathroom --a favorite drop-in for the locals-in-need-- with a back outside door by the toilet blocked by plywood (with graffiti) and secured by a jailhouse door and padlock. The graffiti is minimal, unchanging, and not very interesting…unlike the many people and their stories that collect here.