{"id":785,"date":"2015-01-12T01:04:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T01:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=785"},"modified":"2026-04-07T00:52:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:52:19","slug":"a-nickels-worth-of-laundry","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1975-1977\/a-nickels-worth-of-laundry\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nickel’s Worth of Laundry"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Sheldon lived in Peacock Court, although I don’t think we played and hung around together as much as we had before. Kid friendships tended to drift back and forth like that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was curious about Sheldon’s background. I think he told me that he was Haida, and from a bear clan. I had no concept of my own heritage at the time, and Sheldon’s immediate sense of identity made me feel like I was sort of unrooted by comparison. His bear clan sounded cool.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sheldon had an older brother whom I thought was a bit of a tough character, and he scared me. He was the same guy I mistakenly had thought had mugged me the previous year, although that event seemed to have been forgotten by everyone.<\/p>\n

One day I heard a loud, repetitive banging coming from Sheldon’s unit, so I went to investigate. Sheldon’s brother was squatting on the blacktop in front of their steps, whacking a coin with a hammer over and over again. I learned that you could get a nickel expanded to the size of a quarter this way. It sounded like cheating but also seemed like a cunning plan. (Another technique I’d heard of for cheating vending machines was to use a metal slug of the right size. I’d seen a few of these around on the ground before.)\u00a0Boy, did Sheldon’s brother ever whack the hell out of those poor nickels! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!<\/p>\n

I’d have never thought it was possible, but the extra-large nickels must have done the trick, because later that day, I watched Sheldon walk up the lane from the laundry building with a huge black garbage bag of clean laundry slung over his shoulder. Behind him, socks and underwear fell regularly out of a big rip, forming a trail behind him.<\/p>\n

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My friend Sheldon lived in Peacock Court, although I don’t think we played and hung around together as much as we had before. Kid friendships tended to drift back and forth like that. I was curious about Sheldon’s background. I think he told me that he was Haida, and from a bear clan. I had … Continue reading A Nickel’s Worth of Laundry<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":326,"menu_order":170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-785","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3608,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785\/revisions\/3608"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}