Nana Biography

When he died, my mother came out afterwards, and I went back with her for the funeral, and she came back to Palo Alto after the funeral and stay with us for a while, I invited her. She was a young person, then, and full of vim.  I had a maid, so it was easy, and we decided that we would open a little business to occupy her and me and everything, so we started a Launderette. I kept reading the ads in the Chronicle and here it was, you buy some washing machines, and you get the franchise, and we found a little location not too far away, they said it all up for us, we had the best time we ever had. we rode bicycles, we hired an attendant, but my mother and I, one or the other of us, had to be there all the time.

Had either of you ever been in business before?

My mother wants, long ago, I think right after she had been widowed the first time had a dress shop or something, but I think it was sort of a thing. This time we had to put up some money, and Don gave us the money.  We weren’t making a lot, but it was fun. It was paying off, and she loved it. What it did was give her something to do every morning. She had a little white uniform she put on (both laugh) And you know my mother was so chic and so marvelous she get on her bicycle, and she’d say “well, goodbye “and she go over. And I think a lot of people just thought she was an attendant. One of the funny stories Mrs. Winship came into our place, and we, mother and I were both both there, Saturday morning, and Mrs. Winship came with her chauffeur and station wagon, completely loaded with laundry, and we had 20 machines, and she took 19 of them.

Oh my.

She said, “would you just wash it all and have it dried, “and she sort of flourished out of the store (both laughed) and mother, and I put all this wash into the machines, and that evening her show came back in the afternoon and we gave him all the laundry, that evening we were at the Menlo Country Club for cocktails, and dinner, we could take our mother out, and I think we had a beau for her, I’m not sure, but anyway, Don and my mother and I were sitting in the little cocktail lounge in our elegant finery and Mrs. Winship and her husband, and she said, “oh “, and she looked for a minute and then she knew that she’d seen us but she couldn’t quite place us. She said “where do I know you? “and I said, “Mrs. Winship, I’m your laundress “ (both laugh). And she was horrified, she said, “Oh, how do you do “and she just went passing on through and my mother just got the biggest kick out of that (both laugh).  So anyway, that business experience. Then, after I was divorced, the second business experience, I bought a vending machine route. I did this on my own.

On your own, without any advice?

Well, wait till you hear. So John came to the family. He knew about this vending route, because every week I piled the kids in on Saturday morning and we would go the route, empty the candy machines, and put in fresh candy and empty the cigarettes and so on, we had one place where you just put a penny in the napkin holder and you pushed a lever and it gave you a fortune.  (laughs.). So we would go and take all the pennies out and put them in little wrappers and give them man in the Chinese restaurant one fourth of them and take the rest home. (Laugh.)

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