HAWAIIAN STYLE
Coming clean on dirty laundry
They know way too much about your underwear — and are recognized everywhere they go in Kane'ohe: "Eh, you Da Clothes Lady," they tell Robin Hauki, recognizing her from her Kane'ohe Laundromat ads.
Like dog owners who know each other by their pets' names, both Hauki and her mother, Ku'uipo Goings, learn to recognize customers by their clothes long before they can match the names with the faces.
They still chuckle over their first day owning the longtime Kane'ohe coin-operated laundry and drop-off service: April Fools' Day.
"It had been raining all week," recalled Hauki. "Clothes kept coming in and piling up."
Soon, the novice owners of the laundromat were losing track of whose jeans belonged with which stack of T-shirts. They'd forgotten to tag the clothes, so they were asking each other: "Now whose underwear is this?"
As the deluge continued outside, soon the old machines inside were overflowing, the floor now slippery with suds. Then they began running out of machines, change — and patience. "You could see who were the biggest (April) Fools!" said Hauki.
When customers returned to pick up their laundry, they huffed at Hauki and Goings: "These aren't our clothes."
"It was 'haywire,'" said Hauki. "I never like come back."
The more akamai of the two, according to Hauki, was mom — who took off for a previously arranged Mainland vacation just days after the disastrous opening. "She went up to see the birth of her grandchild," said Hauki, who was left to suffer the labor pains of the new business.
Now the two, with help from 'ohana member Matilda Davis, work nine-hour days, seven days a week, open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Mom is the early bird, Hauki and Davis pulling the night shifts.
"I'm jus' da greeting committee," joked Davis — "Miss Aloha." It's no wonder most customers become 'ohana, many hanging out at the shop regularly.
"They all become 'auntie' and 'cuz' here," said Goings. Some customers, they discovered after talk-story, actually were Kahiapo family from Ha'iku, Maui.
"Everyone calls her mom," said Davis. And mom, they all agree, has a gift for the business — a nose that can handle the pilau garments, from soiled diapers to "'alu'alu BVDs."
After years in the business, they have learned:
• Laundromats are no longer women sitting around to wala'au. Plenty of men do the family laundry on the coin-operated machines. "One guy said he does the wash so he wife cannot," joked Hauki.
• Single guys are the neatest, most particular customers.
• The usual laundry drop-off runs $6 to $7, but they have had totals as high as $100. "One guy brought everything in his house," said Goings — including draperies, rugs and blankets, after a house flood.
• Sometimes customers leave with more than they thought they'd brought in — like the one who had cashed his paycheck and absent-mindedly left the $10, $20 and $100 bills in his pants pockets. The washers "looked like those cash-blowing machines" used in store promotions, Goings said.
"I hit the jackpot!" the customer was teased later.
The next day the same customer left the key to his Mercedes in his laundry, and the good-natured ribbing continued: "Eh, Keoni, I looking for da car that goes with dis key."
• Underwear always gets the most interest, with mo'opuna, the grandkids, sometimes adults, giggling in wonderment over the G-strings, thongs and gel-filled bras that come in to be washed.
And though the laundromat operators have seen more than their share of undies, they have hit upon this local truism:
People around here tend to want to wash their own underwear, said Hauki.
