In the story of Rip Van Winkle, the tale’s eponymous hero drinks from a jug of enchanted liquor and then drops off for a 20-year slumber in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. During this time he misses significant events, including the American Revolution. Try, if you will, to picture a similar situation in which a laundry operator tippled some magic hooch in 1972 and then woke up in 2012. He’d discover an industry that had changed almost as dramatically as the world that confronted Rip Van Winkle after he awoke from his extended nap.
 
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