A LOAD OF WHITES

by Dallon Adams

It was laundry day. I was at the bar across the street from the Laundromat.

I thought of all the glorious innovations that had made middle-class life moderately bearable for such a marginal amount of time.
The model home we air-dropped in the Iron Curtain in the 50s to promote the merits of Capitalism.

Nixon turning knobs on something-or-others and whatcha-ma-call-its, and Khrushchev curious about just where the Americans kept the machine ‘that puts the food in the mouth and pushes it down’.

They both agreed on their hatred of jazz and that they should ‘do this more often’ and not to nuke each other and parted ways.

* * *

“Would you like another whisky?” asked the barkeep.

“You know me all too well.”

His face switched into a sharp grin.

“I’m going to run across the street, I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t pour it ‘til I get back.”

* * *

I folded my briefs and laid it all in my duffle bag.

Mack poured my drink neat. I put it in my mouth and pushed it down.

“Another, sir?”

“You know me too well, Mack. Go ‘head, I’ll be right back. I forgot the fabric softener.”

I nudged the vending machine on my way out to see if I could knock a bag of pork rinds loose.

I threw my laundry over my shoulder and whistled a little and took Mason to Skidmore.

The first wave of robo-barkeeps were still green to Man’s mysterious ways. Give the boys a few more years to tweak Asimov’s First Three Laws of Robotics and then I’d set myself out to pasture, waiting for the sirens, neon rain and the televised lottery, with limited commercial interruption, for seats in the fallout shelter. •