Of Course the Laundry Case

In a recent issue of the New Yorker, writing -- if memory serves -- about a business model, I found a writer sneering about how inefficient it was for his uncle to send his dirty laundry home from college.
Not so, my young friend!  What else was Uncle supposed to do with his laundry – those white shirts with starched collars and cuffs -- with perma-press still decades in the future? Sending out to a professional laundry would break the student’s Depression-era budget.  Uncle could hardly expect to manage those shirts in the soapstone tubs in the dorm basement.  The Bendix, the pioneering automatic washer, wouldn’t hit town till manufacturers got hold of materials after the War --  and if WW II was still on, btw, why wasn’t Uncle overseas altogether?

Of course the dirty laundry went home to Mother, in a special laundry case, at low postage rates.  And when it came back, there was probably a fresh-baked kuchen tucked in the middle.