Special Agent
Laundry day in Hawthorne Nevada. I didn't get much wrong apart from loading my wash plus soap into the dryer instead of the washer before inserting my quarters and turning on the machine, then waiting thirty minutes for it to thoroughly dry my already dry, but still unwashed clothes. I was just pulling them out when another customer walked in to whome I exclaimed, " Wow, this washer actually dries your clothes too." He noticed my mistake about half a moment before it finally dawned on me. He gave me a look that said, how stupid can you get? Before he could press that point home the camp manager ( this was at the Good Sam campground where I'd stopped to buy a shower and inspired by my new found cleanliness was following that up with some laundry) stopped in to say hello to the man who had just arrived. He asked him if he had caucused, they knew each other, and the Nevada caucuses of the 2016 presidential race had just occurred. Yes , he answered, and he'd "voted for the idiot". There was no question who he was referring to. He meant Trump. He also seemed very proud to have promoted the candidate that he considered an idiot. Trump had won the Nevada caucus. He was winning most of them. The other candidates were helpless to stop him, and unable to explain or understand his broad appeal inside, much less outside the Republican party.
Apart from the strangers odd way of characterizing his choice for president, and a genius for discriminating between washers and dryers far exceedingly my own, there was nothing about him that struck you as impressive. He looked just like any other old coot living out in the desert. Turns out ,as we talked, and he told me about his life he was much more impressive in life story than appearance. But what do we expect of people who have lived life much larger than the rest of us? Should they resemble the people who play them in Hollywood? My experience is, they seldom do. They tend to look like the rest of us schlubs.
We got as far back as 1958 in his story. He told me that that was when he was in the military, in Indochina, and he was recruited by the CIA, a career that lasted almost twenty years. He'd killed for his country, and been shot at, he said. It would have been a suspicious story coming from anyone else but I was warming up to him, and still find it all believable. Then came marriage to a beautiful casino floor manager in Las Vegas. After her untimely death he took to drinking and misspent the money she had left him. Much of it went to buying brothels in central Nevada. He had owned three, including the famous Bunny Ranch. It was there he'd had the misfortune of having partners who were skimming off the profits for themselves. This lead to a fight. That led to two bullet holes in his belly which he was happy to show me. The other guy didn't walk away. You don't get into a gun battle with ex-CIA may be the moral of that story.
Was any of this true? Was all of it or none of it? Who knows? Might make a great book really. Someone could buy the movie rights. Someone could play a younger, slightly more chiseled version of our hero. I'm thinking ,Matt Damon.
I eventually got those confusing machines worked out, which one was dry and which one was wet, and in what order to use them. I rode out of Hawthorne cleaner, happier, and wondering about all the schlubs out there. They've all got some kind of story to tell. An hour alone with them in the laundromat of a one horse town might be enough to throw off all your first impressions, or maybe just confirm your harshest suspicions. Maybe you just need to pick the right laundry, or the wrong machine.
Laundry day in Hawthorne Nevada. I didn't get much wrong apart from loading my wash plus soap into the dryer instead of the washer before inserting my quarters and turning on the machine, then waiting thirty minutes for it to thoroughly dry my already dry, but still unwashed clothes. I was just pulling them out when another customer walked in to whome I exclaimed, " Wow, this washer actually dries your clothes too." He noticed my mistake about half a moment before it finally dawned on me. He gave me a look that said, how stupid can you get? Before he could press that point home the camp manager ( this was at the Good Sam campground where I'd stopped to buy a shower and inspired by my new found cleanliness was following that up with some laundry) stopped in to say hello to the man who had just arrived. He asked him if he had caucused, they knew each other, and the Nevada caucuses of the 2016 presidential race had just occurred. Yes , he answered, and he'd "voted for the idiot". There was no question who he was referring to. He meant Trump. He also seemed very proud to have promoted the candidate that he considered an idiot. Trump had won the Nevada caucus. He was winning most of them. The other candidates were helpless to stop him, and unable to explain or understand his broad appeal inside, much less outside the Republican party.
Apart from the strangers odd way of characterizing his choice for president, and a genius for discriminating between washers and dryers far exceedingly my own, there was nothing about him that struck you as impressive. He looked just like any other old coot living out in the desert. Turns out ,as we talked, and he told me about his life he was much more impressive in life story than appearance. But what do we expect of people who have lived life much larger than the rest of us? Should they resemble the people who play them in Hollywood? My experience is, they seldom do. They tend to look like the rest of us schlubs.
We got as far back as 1958 in his story. He told me that that was when he was in the military, in Indochina, and he was recruited by the CIA, a career that lasted almost twenty years. He'd killed for his country, and been shot at, he said. It would have been a suspicious story coming from anyone else but I was warming up to him, and still find it all believable. Then came marriage to a beautiful casino floor manager in Las Vegas. After her untimely death he took to drinking and misspent the money she had left him. Much of it went to buying brothels in central Nevada. He had owned three, including the famous Bunny Ranch. It was there he'd had the misfortune of having partners who were skimming off the profits for themselves. This lead to a fight. That led to two bullet holes in his belly which he was happy to show me. The other guy didn't walk away. You don't get into a gun battle with ex-CIA may be the moral of that story.
Was any of this true? Was all of it or none of it? Who knows? Might make a great book really. Someone could buy the movie rights. Someone could play a younger, slightly more chiseled version of our hero. I'm thinking ,Matt Damon.
I eventually got those confusing machines worked out, which one was dry and which one was wet, and in what order to use them. I rode out of Hawthorne cleaner, happier, and wondering about all the schlubs out there. They've all got some kind of story to tell. An hour alone with them in the laundromat of a one horse town might be enough to throw off all your first impressions, or maybe just confirm your harshest suspicions. Maybe you just need to pick the right laundry, or the wrong machine.
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