Scenes from a North Austin laundromat: Recent drizzly weeknight. About 9:45 p.m.

The business is empty as a lone customer enters. He loads two dryers, one with wet towels, the other with a wet comforter and dry tennis balls. Yes, dry tennis balls. There is a reason.

Four quarters in each dryer buy 28 minutes of drying time, which will extend beyond the posted 10 p.m. closing time. An older gentleman, who it turns out owns the business, enters the building after the customer has retreated to his car to spend some time on task with his computer while the dryers and tennis balls do their thing (whatever the tennis balls' thing is).

The owner, as he entered the building, had waved to the man in the car, who then headed back into the building, worried about the possibility that the time-space continuum could mean closing time would come before his loads are dry and he gets his eight quarters’ worth of dryer time.

Not to worry.

“You have plenty of time,” the owner says with a smile and in a friendly tone, making it clear the customer is free to stay beyond closing time if that’s what it takes to dry the two loads.

“First time here?” he asks the customer.

“Yes,” says the customer.

“I know most of my customers,” the owner says with pride.

He’s been in Austin for 30 years, having come here from Vietnam. He’s run the laundromat for those 30 years.

The first-time customer explains the visit was an unplanned one, prompted by a broken dryer at home.

“Broken dryers. Broken washers,” the owner says, acknowledging it’s how some customers find their way to his business.

Some time passes. The customer retreats to his car to check something. He re-enters the building. The business owner, having completed his closing chores, takes a seat near the customer who’s standing at the machines. Both men watch the spinning laundry in the two dryers.

“Why you drying tennis balls?” the laundromat owner, noticing the four yellow balls rolling around with the comforter in the dryer.

“I don’t really know,” the customer responds. “My wife says they do something. Magic.”

There are some things, the customer goes on to say, that a husband doesn’t question after many years of marriage. The laundromat owner nods knowingly and points to himself.

“Fifty-seven years,” he says matter of factly. “Fifty-seven years.”

And with that, the two men, despite ending the meeting without knowing each other’s name, bond as their paths briefly cross during a chance encounter caused by a malfunctioning dryer on this night in Austin and a long-ago, far-away war that disrupted many lives and put this man on a path to local laundromat ownership.

The laundry dry, the customer loads up the towels and comforter and tennis balls and heads out, stopping to thank the patient laundromat owner and shake his hand.

“Welcome to Austin,” the customer says, immediately realizing what a dumb thing that is to say to someone who's been here for 30 years.

As the customer heads out, the laundromat owner yells in his direction: “You come back and tell me why wife says you dry tennis balls.”

It’s a good question. And, in a reminder of something else you learn after many years of marriage, turns out the wife is right. Lots of learned websites report on the benefit of tossing a few tennis balls in the dryer with certain loads.

“Line-drying makes the down in jackets, comforters and sleeping bags dry flattened or in a lump,” Consumer Reports said this year in a May article. “The fluffier the down, the warmer you stay because there’s more distance between you and the cold air. So use the dryer, and add several tennis balls. They fluff the down by beating against it.”

Good to know, especially as what passes for the cold-weather season arrives in Central Texas.

Just like it’s good to know that we still live in a country where refugees are welcomed, a nation that gets as much as it gives when it opens its doors to immigrants in need.

A warm and safe Thanksgiving to all. And keep your down fluffed.