Clotheslines

Fresh air and sunshine

Clotheslines

Revealed to the world

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Hands down, a mule is preferred to any New Mexico canary.

            That matter of burros and mules was settled long ago. The first mule of my memory was stationary. Boppy hauled him home from somewhere and there he remained for some brief period of time. Fairly quickly, my grandfather found out he was a good ornament, book stop, or baby sitter. He saddled him and left him in the flat in front of the tractor shed for me to climb on, under, and over. He stood like a statue, unmoving, and resolute in his mulish mindset.

            I think he was a bay, but he could have been mouse colored as well. He must have been fairly small because I could climb on him by myself. I now wonder what saddle was used.

The first burro was another matter. He appears in my memory at the mouth of the Mangus at Aunt Mary and Uncle Hap’s. He was a sorry sucker and only got sorrier. He was a gray, evil thing that had no steering. The watershed experience with him was on the east side of the house at the clothesline, or, more accurately, under the clothesline. He had homed in on it from up near the fence line water storage and never deviated. In a straight line as if it was plotted on navigational beacons, he came. Never wavering and locked in compound he plodded toward that destructive child shedding device. His every intent was not just to get rid of me, but to murder me in the process.

            Trying everything, I ran out of time, space, and ideas all at the same time. The first wire hooked my left ear as I canted right and backward in attempted avoidance … “OW!”

            The second wire nearly took my nose off in a straight pull that drug me out of the saddle seat, and up and back over the cantle. “Hey, WAIT!”

            The fourth and fifth wires were not even in play as the third wire was taken fully under my chin. Choking, scraping, and stretching my neck to ugly proportions it gagged me until my still stirruped feet met resistance and finally broke free. Suspended horizontally and momentarily in space, the plummet to earth was inevitable. The number three wire completed that son of Satan’s intention of extricating me forcefully from his back. Into the goat heads I flopped as a cloud of dust rose around me.

            When enough air was exchanged, the stars cleared, and I discovered I was still among the living, the utterance was … “AUNT MARY!”

            The externalities

            My departed friend, Brown Smith, he of a long line of Brown Smiths of Brazos River fame was the first to describe the more practical uses of the clotheslines of his youth. His claim was his dad deducted early on he wasn’t the brightest apple in the sunlight plus he was “bad to run off”. In order to avoid lost time searches for him, he was fashioned with a harness and clipped to a clothesline wire with a chain lead attached to a snap. There he was left to play cowboys and Indians, eat dirt, and wander endlessly back and forth the length of the wire.

            That arrangement was finally concluded when he advanced to more mobility and was snapped similarly to a railroad tie cut in half. Turned loose, Brown was able to discover the world in a broadening arc around the ranch headquarters. The tie also left drag marks sufficiently so he could be trailed easily if they needed to capture him for supper or family visits.

            Joe’s brother-in-law, Harlie, was fitted similarly with a dog collar and set of doors in the fresh air on more than a few occasions as well. His mother, sole proprietress of a restaurant, motel, and store about an hour west of some of the best remaining pie selections extant in the arid West, had to revert to the same clothesline containment procedures. She would check on him occasionally, and, there he’d be, sitting watching the traffic going by when he ran out of other things to occupy himself in the endless forays back and forth under 45 feet of clothesline. Folks would honk and wave.

            Fighting wasps was another point of clothesline adventure for many of us who subscribed to such opportunities. Invariably, open ends of the pipe used to hold the lines would become the nesting preference for wasps. Our mothers would scream for elimination of the swarms and we’d rise to the task. Those attacks would become fully orchestrated campaigns. We’d call for reinforcements. Time was spent placing convenient as well as strategically located ammunition stockpiles. It was then time to step off. To get things stirred up, we’d open up with BB guns. We’d then progress to mud clods hurled at the exposed ends and wind up sending a runner up there to make the final plug(s). Seldom were we stung having become such competent wasp fighters from years of experience. It was all just part of living in the West.

            And, of course, there was the actual and original use of the structures … drying clothes.

            The core issue

            Remember the word dingy?

Hanging clothes was much akin to fighting wasps. Skills and astute observations were perfected only by experience over long periods of time. That applied to the actual practice of hanging fresh wash as much as it applied to the judgment of the outcome. Our mothers, and, perhaps more so, our grandmothers were relentless critics of every clothesline in the county. So and so would always show here true colors by the appearance of her weekly wash. Somebody else demonstrated “pure ‘D’ old laziness” in her laundering skills, and heaven help the lady who might reveal evidence of forbidden guests. In fact, few secrets could be kept by such intelligence gathering.

As a result, procedures were perfected that put the best blush on the laundering process.

The older campaigners would likely set the shields early. The big stuff went on the outside wires the world would see. It was there sheets, towels, and pillow cases went to block off direct line of sight to the more private stuff. In fact, very few of us can probably remember hanging clothes. Taking them down was another matter, but setting them out was the domain of the matron in charge and we can now look back and maybe discern the issues involved.

Wash day was traditionally Monday. That put much of our generation in school and out of the way to allow concentration of the task. It also allowed the stewardess of the clothesline full control of the sights and soundness doctrine of the process. Secret additives particularly for whiteness could be parlayed without divulging the recipe. Placement onto the clothesline could also be done with the least public observation.

Protocol was strict. Whites were hung with whites. Darks were hung with darks. The white unmentionables were buried in the middle with line of sight shields obstructing critical reviews. The proper way to hang socks was by the toes not the tops. Levi’s were hung by the cuffs not the waistbands. Never were shirts allowed to be hung by the shoulders. They were to be hung by the tails. Most importantly it didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, wash day was maintained with enforced discipline.

Taking down the clothes was our assignment. When we arrived home on washday, it was also the day butter was usually churned. We didn’t have a milk cow after we moved to the outskirts of town, but our neighbors, George and Dolly Brown, did, and we bought milk from them. After it was cooled and the cream separated, the latter would be skimmed off into the churn. When we arrived home, one of us would be tasked to turn the crank on the churn until butter made. Somebody else would be sent to ‘gather the clothes’. There was an old wicker basket and we’d go get the wash. We had a cloth pen holder and we’d push it along with us putting pens in it as we unpenned the clothes and dropped them into the basket. Clothes would be off the line within 30 minutes of our arrival home from school. They would be hung or folded immediately thereafter and put away.

At places like Minnie Rice’s, the sheets and handkerchiefs were not folded. They were put aside and ironed. My mother, a subsequent generation matron of the clothesline, looked at that Herculean task as archaic and out of date. Minnie looked at it as the finishing touches of original domestic stewardship.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “If there is a single smell of the past that I miss the most … it is the smell (and feel) of fresh, clean sun dried sheets from the clothesline.”