When I was a kid in Pittsburgh PA, there was a section of town nearby of older 3-story apartment buildings. In the basement there would be a huge laundry room with multiple cement laundry tubs in the center of the room. Some residents had their own machines in this room...often wringer washers. But there was always at least one coin-op automatic, either Frigidaire, Maytag, or Speed Queen in the room. When I didnt have anything to do, I would visit these laundry rooms and watch the washers....they were always running and rarely was anyone around. The Frigidaires all had round windows and three ring agitators...they were my favorites and I quickly found out which buildings had them. There were rarely dryers...the tenants just hung their laundry in this big room in the winter and outside in the summer.
One time I was visiting a laundry room with a Frigidaire washer and walked in and opened the lid, when suddenly from behind me boomed this gravely voiced old broad with a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth: "Hey!!! What are you doing???!!!" I almost jumped out of my skin and dropped the lid, which crashed down. She accused me of trying to steal her underwear out of the washer (yeah, right!!) I was probably about 10 or 11 and couldn't believe anyone would even think of something like that. She said she was going to have me arrested and called me a pervert. I didn't know what that even was and was scared to death. I ran out of the room and didn't come back for quite a while. But when I did there was a note taped up warning the other residents to watch out for a boy who is looking at and taking ladies undergarments!!! haha!
