CLOVIS: "THE MAGIC STEAM LAUNDRY" ---1938

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CLOVIS REMEMBERED!

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"I knew that laundry like the back of my hand, the bottom of my feet,
 and the smell in my nose..."
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My dad, back in the hard depression years of the 1930's, was running a big nice modern laundry for a woman-owner down in Dawson County, Texas. Dad was  making who-knows how much money? Maybe two or three dollars a day.

Somehow he heard of a laundry for sale in Clovis, N.M., one where he could make a decent living; goodness knows he was already "working his fingers to the bone," as the saying of the day went. I remember nothing much about how he acquired the Clovis laundry, but the good news was that included in the deal was a little house, right behind the laundry, and connected to it by a walkway. Thus we lived right at the job!

May  I digress slightly here, my readers, to remind you younger ones of something: washers and dryers were almost unheard of in the average home, until after WWII. A good many of the common folks used what were called "Helpy-Selfies," do-it-yourself laundries where you washed your own clothes in a Maytag, which had a rotating wringer system and three tubs. You then took your clothes  home and told the kids to hang them on the clothesline.

There  were commercial steam laundries in those days, for those people who worked, and had no time for washing clothes, and also for hotels, motels, hospitals, barber shops, cafes, et. al.

So now, back to the Magic Steam! I knew that laundry "like the back of my hand, the bottom of my feet, and the smell in my nose!" You see, at my tender age, it was the only world I had or knew---it and the eight blocks to La Casita School and back, which was a year or two in the future.

Saying "the bottom of my feet" is no idle talk because when we arrived in Clovis to take over the laundry in the late spring of 1938, my dad took me around and warned me: "Those pipes running along the floor, by the double doors to the alley, they are steam pipes and very hot. DON'T STEP ON THEM BAREFOOTED!"

Dear reader, you will need to sit down for this one!  A few days later, it being early "barefoot season," and barefooted being the custom of the day--- as my mother would say, I "PARADED" out into the laundry, without shoes.... for exploration and familiarization purposes. There were those two steam pipes, lying there as if eye-balling me. I don't know what came over me--maybe I was a Reaganite before it was cool---but something in me said: "Trust but verify." That's what I did--- I verified---with my two bare feet. I stepped right squarely on those pipes!  (Dad  was right!) OOOOH!!! My feet were ruined.

I was disabled for several days in our little house right behind the laundry. I needed a right smart of attention. My mother, the shirt-finisher over in the laundry, had to come over to my bed every hour or so, and check on me. Early on, she brought a pan of warm water for me to soak my blistered feet. Warm water?! My feet were already warm--"Mom, get some ICE WATER!", I said. "No," she said, "Warm water is what they say you should use." (I never did find out who "they" were in those days, but "they" were wrong about half the time, it seemed.) "They" were wrong then, because in later years, ICE became the prescribed remedy! I was right! I knew I needed ice!

Going back in my story a little bit: On arrival in Clovis that warm late spring night in 1938, pulling an overloaded cotton trailer containing all our worldly goods, a storm was brewing. Afraid of all our stuff getting wet, Dad was able to find a big building down there around Second and Mitchell, and they allowed us to back our trailer in there. We kept enough bedding and supplies to spend the night down  at the laundry. No utilities were hooked up at the house behind the laundry yet.

The laundry building was at 313 West Grand. It sat in the middle of the block, on the west side of the alley, facing north. It was a big square flat-top building, stuccoed white, and the stucco was so slick that it was some early-type stucco, smooth and all, or it had been painted white over and over. It looked a little bit like divinity candy and many's the time I ran my hand over it---yes, you guessed it, the back of my hand. Those little stucco bumps were fascinating. A faded Coca-Cola sign was painted on the alley side of the building, easily visible from the street. The size of the laundry was, I suppose, about 50 X120 feet. It is important for the reader, in order to picture the big white building correctly, to realize that though it contained only one floor, it was two stories tall. The extra height was needed to disburse the heat.

My first bath  in Clovis came that first rainy night. It was in the back of the laundry in the  biggest washing machine. Dad filled it half full of water, opened one big door--the left one---and tossed us boys in there, leaving the brass hinges and latch open.

Then Mom hooked up an old hot plate to a  gas jet between the extractor and the first washing machine, and cooked us a "mess" of bacon, fried potatoes, and onions, our first meal in Clovis. There was a Heap O' Livin' comin' up in those days, for us. I grew to LOVE the sounds of the railroad---we were only three blocks or so north of it, in our old house behind the laundry. To this day I can still hear the clang, bang, steam-releasing spew,  puff-puff sounds of the railroad tracks---great sounds!!  Good sleepin' noises!

 Dad got the laundry running smoothly that summer of 1938. The heat could be tough, however. In those days there was little air conditioning in any residences or buildings.

All we had at the laundry was a big fan over the door. On a hot day outside, combined with a hot day inside, it could get WARM! In the wintertime of course, it was very cozy.

The memory of "sand storms" comes back to me. We'd sit there on an afternoon, when all the help had gone home, and watch the sky literally.turn red with sand as the wind began blowing a gale from the west. We'd  watch it out the laundry windows...blowing down Grand Avenue toward town. There'd be sand everywhere, in the air, in everything, and no customers---nobody would brave the weather!

One thing I must mention: when we think or talk of great, memorable smells, we are usually referring to food. One wonderful, unforgettable smell is that of a laundry at about 4 p.m. All the machines are shut down, the steam is turned off, and things get still and quiet. But the SMELL is awesome! It is the smell of starched, ironed and pressed clean clothes, clean sheets...hundreds of pieces of laundry---the  smell still lingering...at the end of the day. I'll never forget it!

The old building may not have been the most impressive laundry building around, but I dare say in all seriousness and sincerity that nowhere in the history of the world has there ever been any cleaner, better laundered clothes than Dad produced. The mens' dress shirts (at 15 cents) were absolutely superb. Finished and folded to perfection, with a nice blue band around them, they were fabulous. They were folded around a cardboard--try it sometime-- on a couple of hundred shirts! Shirts on hangers? Who ever heard of that in 1938? 

Yes, I knew the Magic Steam Laundry  "like the  back of my hand, the bottom of my feet, and the smell in my nose." The old phone number was "397." You had to speak it to the operator. It is  fitting that old Clovis be remembered, and after all, this is a piece of Americana too.

WWII was ahead, and more about the laundry. Mil worked there, Stay tuned for more!

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BY MIL
5/23/12