by Julie Carter
She set her bushel basket atop a small wooden keg to save
from bending over so far with each piece of clothing to be hung on the line.
The sun shone brightly as she methodically shook out each piece and pinned it
properly to the heavy wire line that ran parallel to two others the full length
of the back yard.
Sliding the clothespin bag down the line as she progressed, without a thought she went about hanging aprons, dish towels and an assortment of undershirts and underwear.
The next line would be full of shirts, always hung by the tails, never the shoulders, followed by a dozen pair of jeans in graduated sizes. Socks were matched up before hanging by the toes so they could easily be folded or rolled when taken off the line.
There are a couple of generations of us left that remember our mother’s time spent at the clothesline and a few more that might have carried the age-old tradition into a more modern time.
I've raised children who now have children and none of them have used a clothesline. If they lived anywhere there was one, it might have served to throw a rug over it or tie the dog to, but never did they experience life's connection offered by a clothesline.
They never learned about wiping off the lines with a cloth before hanging up the freshly washed clothes. They missed the lessons of clothesline etiquette -- hanging whites with whites and preferably the undies went on the line behind the bed sheets for propriety's sake.
They have never been scrutinized by a neighbor’s raised eyebrow for dingy gray whites or ever shopped for Mrs. Stewart's Bluing. They may have only some recall of unconventional uses for clothespins such as fire-throwing catapults with stick matches, mousetraps, rubber band shooters and detonators.
I still have visions of my mother racing the rain that was blowing down off the
mountain, pushing dirt clouds ahead of it and promising to ruin the efforts of
her day-long washing project.
Grabbing huge armloads of clothes in one fell swoop, clothespins flying, she'd move to rescue, first, the sheets and white things before they became dimpled with muddied drops.
In the day before the plastic laundry baskets, Mom would buy
an oil-cloth liner for about a dollar
at the five-and-dime store to use in another wooden fruit basket. She would
sprinkle the clothes with a bottle of water with an attachment made just for
this job, roll them tightly and place them in layers in the basket. Then she
would cover it all in more plastic to hold the moisture until the ironing
began.
The elevation at the ranch house where we lived was 8,200
feet, making summer very brief and winter fierce and long. For more months than
not, freshly laundered clothes freezing on the line was the bigger problem.
It wasn't uncommon to have clothes that refused to dry outside strung around the dining room and hung on the backs of chairs to dry. There was also that flimsy folding rack that sat near the only source of heat in the main part of the house. I recall it full of drying diapers long before the day of disposables.
A memory of a time when life was simpler but work was harder. Propped up in the middle by a two-by-four post, old sagging clothes lines still offer a friendly greeting to a home where clothes are cared for by love, not by Whirlpool.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com
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