During the night, one night last week, the cold water pipe that feeds our washer, which is in our basement washroom, sprung a slow leak. Luckily we were up early enough that Monday to find that it had only partially flooded the floor closest to a support wall. The sixty-year-old pipe, imbedded into the wall, had cracked. Repairing it involved by passing the wall and relaying the pipe according to today's code. But being concerned about my plumbing is not my story for today. It does however bring me to what I want to tell you were a direct result of my burst pipe.

My wife is a busy lady. So, to relieve her anxiety over missing her 'wash day', I elected to take our laundry to the local laundromat. Not since my single days, twenty some odd years now, had I stepped foot into a laundromat. It was a pleasant enough place, not filled with too many people, which made my chore of learning how to use 'pay as you load washers' much easier. I got my clothes loaded, a la my wife's instructions, whites in one machine, and coloreds in another. But I have to admit that the procedure to load the coin device escaped me. Next to me was a lady downloading coins; she looked like she had obviously worked the coin eaters before. When asked, she graciously showed me how to get my machines going.

After settling down on a bench to await the finish of my laundry, I noticed she sat at the end of the same bench to read a book. Of course, my being in the literary field prompted me to ask her about her book. She gave it rave review and our conversation took off from there. Another lady, who turned out to be her sister, joined in. Her accent, more pronounced than her sister's drove me to ask where they were from. In comparing our histories, we found that we all were born and grew up in similar area, mainly the Bronx and Long Island, New York. We were having such great fun talking about our roots that neither one of us realized our laundry was done. Only each of us taking our clothes to different outer wall dryers stopped our commiserating.

While folding my laundry, I mused at how pleasant the women were and how much I had enjoyed their company. It had been a long time since I had passed such a pleasurable hour. It took two, lovely total strangers to make that happen.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Thank you all for responding so favorably to "Marty's" segment of human-interest stories. He has received a few more through his e-mail. He is prepping some of them for presentation in our coming PRESSPOINTS issues. Contact him on site; http://www.4pointspress.com or direct your email to the Editor.