It’s been years since Rita’s Coinamatic laundry closed. The laundromat was open 365 days a year and the hours were long.

Situated at the foot of Oxford Avenue where it intersects with Cumberland Street, the Coinamatic was the place to do your laundry and a social center, too. Most customers walked to Rita’s. Young mothers and children met there and shared their stories.

Rita Robichaud owned and operated the laundry and listened to her customers while she worked. Some turned to her for advice.

Rita’s was a cozy place with its sweet steamy odors of clean stuff tumbling in the dryers and the slap and snap of hotel and restaurant linens being folded on the wide table at the rear. There were children’s books by the benches up front and posters promoting community events.

Today, the little laundromat on The Flats is unoccupied and up for sale. It’s pretty quiet on Oxford Avenue these days, except for the early morning breakfast crowd at the Deluxe.

By the time the door shut behind Mrs. R. for the last time, we’d acquired a washer and dryer of our own. Last week, however, we were without a home laundry, but not without laundry that needed doing. Today, the only laundry game in the River Valley between Hanover and Dixfield is the Mexico Laundromat in the Mexico Plaza.

There I went last Friday, me and two bags of laundry. With the Registry of Motor Vehicles staff on furlough and on the eve of the summer’s most beautiful weekend yet, the Mexico Plaza was pretty quiet. Even so, a steady trickle of customers hauled their laundry in and out.

The Mexico Laundromat is sparkling clean, floors, machines, and all. This laundry facility must be three times the size of Rita’s Coinamatic. Down the middle are a back-to-back row of 20 standard-size washers, $1.75 a load. Notices taped to each machine read: Please, do not overload the washer and do not wash blankets in this machine!

Ten large-load washers run along the right and rear walls of the laundry. The number of quarters required per load varies from 12 ($3) to 19 ($5.25). The laundromat is not cheap! How could it be? There’s the rent, the manager’s pay, the insurance, the taxes, and the utilities!

Like me last week, laundromat users have no other option. I’d gotten a roll of quarters from the credit union. I remembered the detergent and the dirty laundry. I pile it all in Number Nine and find the right place to pour in the detergent. I begin pushing quarters through the slot. This does not go well.

The machine is choking on my quarters and the return button is stuck, or something. No one in sight. Nostalgia for Rita’s Coinamatic nearly overcomes me, but I recover and call for help. A woman hurries from behind one door, unlocks another, disappears behind it, then emerges holding a sharply pointed knife.

She says not a word but turns straight to Number Nine and plunges the knife in the coin slot till all the quarters pop out. She holds one up: This was the culprit, a Canadian quarter from my very own bank’s quarter roll.

We both smile with satisfaction: The Mexico Laundromat feels a little more like Rita’s.

Linda Farr Macgregor is a freelance writer. Contact her: [email protected]