Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having very little or no socks in my dresser, I thought I would walk a little to the watery part of the world: the laundromat. Whenever summer draws to a close, whenever my feet can no longer be shod with sandals, in short: whenever the month draws near when I must once again wear socks, I account it high time to get to the laundromat as soon as I can.
Ambulating thither about noontide, I found the proprietor smoking a pipe and admonishing his employees from on high. And, having trod in silently (my feet still bound in their soft-soled vernal vestments), I chanced to overhear these stormy orders as he stamped about on his peg leg atop the wooden counter that lay abaft the churning washing machines.
“Whosoever of ye raises me a white sock with a wrinkled ankle and a crooked heel; whosoever of ye raises me that white sock, with three holes punctured in his starboard sole – look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white sock, he shall have this gold laundry token, my boys!”
“Huzza! huzza!” cried the men, as with swinging linens they hailed the offer.
“It’s a white sock, I say,” resumed he: “a white sock. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water in the foaming suds; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”
I found this proprietor odd and his quarry odder, for nary a white sock had I seen in my many years as a sock-wearer. Many-colored socks, and socks with paisleys, stripes, and zig-zags, forsooth, indeed socks with tacos, cats, and flamingos I had many times espied. But no “white sock.”
I may perhaps be indulged in pausing our narrative to cast some light on the many species and variation of socks found in the laundromat. It is some systematized exhibition of the sock in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task…
[Section abridged]
… But the Unsimply Stitched sock, called the True Sock by the British, the Gorseberry Sock by the Dutch, and the Fancy Sock by the straightforward – he alone captures the heart of the old salty sockman, for he …
[Section abridged]
… And the laundromat proprietor sank into the 8-load washer, the white sock still clasped round his throat.
[Whoops, maybe that was too much abridgment. Sorry.]
