Each fall, dry cleaners are besieged by customers in a ritual of the equinox. One season's clothes are laid to rest, the other's resurrected, mounted on wire hangers, enshrined in plastic, and sent on their way home--fresh, crisp, infused with that ethery, newly ironed smell.
With the laminated counters, the small cash register, and the lone bank calendar tacked to the wall, the average dry clean-er's hardly seems like a hotbed of intrigue. But look again. Though the clothing racks are automated, creating the illusion of an assembly line, each item on the rack is highly personal. Bank tellers may handle our paychecks, but dry cleaners handl our second skins. And in doing so, they get to know our lives--and even some of our secrets.
"Many customers use the same dry cleaners for years," explains Bu Yu, owner of U&I Cleaners on Packard. "If a husband always brings in all the clothes and then one day his wife brings them in, we'll write down her name and phone number on the slip before she even tells us. 'How did you know that?"' she'll ask. I'll tell her, 'I don't know you, but I know your clothes."
And what do they reveal?
In the most extreme cases, secrets about a rock 'n' roll idol. One weekend, singer Bob Seger was in town doing a concert, says Bob Sitz, owner of Cardinal Garment Care Center in Carpenter Plaza."His stage manager dropped off one of Bob's jackets, then forgot to pick it up be-fore the performance," Sitz says. "We were already closed by the time he realized. He tried to get ahold of us, but to no avail, so Seger didn't wear the jacket for the show. Well, it turns out that night it was about eighty degrees, so he wouldn't have worn it anyways. But what I thought was funny was that when I went to return the jacket, I found a pair of earplugs in the pocket--I guess Seger didn't want to hear himself play!"
As for the less famous, clothes make it obvious who's a slob and who's not.
"You can judge people right away by the clothes they bring in," says Faye Zadeh, the owner of Colonnade Cleaners on Eisenhower Parkway. "Some bring in clothes covered with food, Some bring in dirty clothes hung neatly on hangers." "I can tell who works in a factory, who does office work," says Bu Yu.
"You can always tell if they have children," laughs Edna Harmon of George-Town Cleaners on Packard. "There'll be baby food on the clothes, spit-up. You can also tell who has money or a certain status from a brand name."
"You can tell if people have too much money," says Harold Kim, manager of Ar-men Cleaners on South Ashley. "There are some people who will trash seven-hundred-dollar outfits, they just don't care."
But most memorably, the clothes reveal who's been naughty and who's been nice. Cleaners report finding a lot of condoms in people's pockets, plus women's panties in men's jackets, and men's briefs in women's pockets. It's a veritable sea of underwear out there, it seems. Occasionally, there are stockings and socks, too. Foot fetishes? The cleaners don't ask.
"We've gotten a lot of shirts with lip-stick on the collars," says Rose Market, who works at Capitol Cleaners on Stadium at Main. Such stains can make the state of some people's affairs, so to speak, painfully obvious. Sometimes, a man will bring in a dress shirt with lipstick on it and say, 'Make sure you take this out,' Yu says. "Then he will make up some excuse for me. 'Oh, I went to this wild party last night.' But we'll know it's not right."
Harmon has occasionally found wedding rings in pockets. Does she hide them?
"Nope," she laughs. "I put them in a bag saying, 'Look What We Found' and staple it to the invoice!"
More than hanky-panky and handkerchiefs turn up in people's pockets. There is the usual assortment of forgotten items, including eye-glasses, gum, coins, lipstick, keys, jewelry, and pens. ("We hate ballpoint pens." says Bu Yu. "They melt in the cleaning and ruin the whole load.") There are also drugs, money, weapons, and other surprises among the lint.
"We found a rubber snake in a man's pocket," says Market.
Sitz found crack cocaine. "I flushed it. I couldn't return it legally. I'd be a distributor. Plus, I figure if the customer couldn't remember that they had it, they didn't need it," he chuckles. When Kim found a small bag of marijuana in someone's pocket, he gave it back to the customer with a note reading, "We can't clean this item." More unusual though, be said, was the time he found over $1,000 cash in somebody's pants. "The husband brought it in, but when his wife came to pick up the cleaning, she didn't recognize [the cash] that her husband carried. It turns out he'd been the best man at a wedding, where it was his job to take care of the money." The man had gotten drunk and, in his hangover haze, forgot about the money in his pocket when he brought the suit in to be cleaned the next day. Graciously, Armen Cleaners returned it-without any money laundering.
U&I Cleaners recently found a loaded gun in a pocket. Before doing anything, Yu says, he called the police. Then be removed the bullets. Ultimately, he says, "We let the customer decide what to do with it when she showed up. She had a gun permit."
Customers bring in "some pretty weird stuff" intentionally as well, says Rose Market of Capitol Cleaners. Armen Cleaners once cleaned all the costumes from a road Company production of "Phantom of the Opera." Georgetown Cleaners had the honor of cleaning the Noid costume from Domino's Pizza. It was sort of a cross between an elf outfit and a superhero," explains Harmon. It had a built-in speaker that said, "Avoid the Noid." "I don't know what that means," Harmon admits. They've also gotten all the Goodyear blimp pilots' uniforms and boxer James Toney's robe and shorts.
Despite its name, "dry cleaning" is actually done with a liquid, perchloralethylene. Piped into specially designed washing machines, it cleans clothes without leaving water marks, a necessity for certain delicate fabrics. But customers don't limit themselves to garments labeled "dry clean only." Some bring in handbags, ties, and shoes that can't be dry cleaned, and nightgowns, bras, and lingerie that don't need to be. A "yuppie guy" once brought a bunch of women's underwear into Colonnade Cleaners, Zadeh says, "and asked me to starch it. I guess it was for a special occasion."
At College Cleaners on North University, students have brought in silk panties, not realizing that they can be hand-washed, says manager Berlene Smith. At another dry cleaners a student from the U-M had her entire laundry done on a regular basis--including her underwear and socks, which were returned to her on hangers.
Cardinal Garment has gotten Santa suits and the Spuds MacKenzie Budweiser dog suit. They've also had the honor of cleaning the Humane Society's mascot outfit, a "huge dog suit with fur. It has to be cleaned by hand. Then it takes a few days to brush out," says Sitz.
Beyond the parade of garments and gaffs, it's the customers themselves who make the business interesting. "I'm an older person," says Smith, who's been in the business for years. Since most of her customers are students, "they kind of look to me as a mother figure. They talk to me about their boyfriends and girlfriends. They tell me when they miss their parents. I deal with them as my own."
"When customers come here regularly, they tell you a lot about themselves," Harmon seconds. "They bring us chocolates and cards for Christmas. We get candies and cookies. It's nice."
"Sometimes we know a husband's and wife's schedules better than they do," laughs Kim. "A woman will come in with some cleaning and I'll say, 'So, your husband's going out of town next week.' And she'll say, 'He is?'
"Or, we have a customer who works at U-M Athletic Department. We knew that Gary Moeller got fired before it was announced on the radio."
Cleaners also know, sometimes, when their customers die. Their clothes will sit on a rack for a while, then a surviving family member--usually an elderly widow--will come to reclaim them. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, they say, it's sad.
"We have a regular clientele. It's like family," says Sitz. "Which is better for us, and better for them."
Why?
"We can educate them about dry cleaning, about what clothes to buy, what's good, and what to stay away from."
Such as?
"If you're going to buy rayon, buy a rayon mixture. It avoids water spots better," he says. "Stay away from fancy buttons. They may have been put on after the garment was manufactured, and may not be able to be dry cleaned. Buttons, sequins, and beads can all melt.
In addition, Kim says, "A lot of customers don't realize that dry cleaning is just like washing, except we don't use water. We use a chemical instead, to prevent shrinkage and staining. Not everything is always going to come out.
"Silks, rayons, and some linens use brighteners. All of these are water-soluble, so rain and water spots can damage them. Sometimes, water can be more harmful than grease. There are also some 'false garments' out there that say 'dry clean,' then change colors when they're treated."
He also advises people to read the labels carefully. If they don't say "dry clean" and you bring them in anyway, the clothes can get damaged. "We always try to read the labels, but with six to seven hundred orders a month, it gets busy."
And all the cleaners say, don't forget to pick up your dry cleaning after it's finished. Clothes that have been hanging on the racks for more than a year are usually donated to charity. If you're still living in Ann Arbor, you may see somebody else on the street in what used to be your jacket--with your old lover's underwear still tucked in the pocket.