55
“If anyone is 55 or older you get a free drink with your pizza,” the server says to me and my husband. I blink to give myself time to think. Am I older than 55? When did THAT happen?
I accept the drink, then sprint back to the laundromat to plug quarters into the dryer. It takes a credit card but so far I’ve only figured out how to charge enough for 4 minutes so I’m now armed with bills that I will need to convert into quarters. I rarely use cash, the $20 in my wallet that the server charged into four $5, was only in case my bike breaks down and someone offers me a ride back to the start. That bill had been carefully folded to fit into my wallet with three credit cards, a driver’s license and a AAA card. So now I don’t have quarters but at least I have a $5 for the change machine.
Back at Jim’s Laundromat which is next to Jim’s Barber, I watch a woman swipe her credit card to use the dryer. She punches a few buttons and ends up with 30 minutes on the dryer.
“Hey how did you do that? I couldn’t figure it out … “ I ask.
She smiles, flips back her stringy blond hair, and tugs at a tank top that can hardly cover her large body. The tattoos grab my attention; the drawings are simple and the ink is faint.
“Oh now there’s a trick, it took me awhile honey to figure it out.” She says to me. I notice the thick lines running through her face that are well beyond wrinkles, they are more like deep creases.
She marches over to my dryer, I hand her my card, and she pushes an odd green button with the precision of doing Morse code. I squeal in her success.
“You ain’t from here, “ she says, “cause if you was, I would know you already. I'm from these parts so I know just bout everybody.”
We are in the town of Tilimook which is not on the coast, but close enough to have the vacationers swarming through on their way to reach the beach, all here to escape the summer heat and the awful forest fires and to worship sunset walks on pristine beaches. Tilamook is famous for cheese and ice cream, products from huge farms with dairy cows that muck their way through goopy pastures. And Tilamook also relies on timber, large trees are plucked from the surrounding forest and hauled off to nearby lumber mills.
“Nope,” I say, “I ain’t from here. I’m from Bend, just here on vacation with the rest of the summer mob. I’m living in my van.”
She laughs and says,”wow, now ain’t that nice that we have that in common. But you livin in a fancy van.” She says. “You got the one with all the bikes hanging off the back?”
I nod my head. I scan the parking lot which is an assortment of old cars. I see an old blue van that is rusted out on the sides.
She points it out and adds, “I ain’t got no kitchen, sure wish I could have me a kitchen. And a bathroom. You gotta a bathroom?”
I smile and laugh, “nope I gotta use the outhouses like everyone else. Or just pee in the woods.”
She laughs so hard that she snorts. Then she tells me about her kids, the three spread across Oregon. She’s 57, another thing we have in common.
Later at Jim’s Laundromat, as I wait for the dryer to time out to zero, I watch the woman pull out in her blue van. I wonder where she’s heading off to sleep tonight, where is she going to eat. I think about the steaming pizza that I just polished off, along with my free drink. I bet she wouldn’t be offended to be offered up a free drink for being over 55. I imagine she would laugh with a snort and say, “why giddy up, it’s my lucky day.”
