Clotheslines

When I sat down to brainstorm ideas for this post, it came down to a toss-up between clotheslines and goat hygiene. I don't know anything about goat hygiene, so clotheslines it is.

I've seen a lot of TV commercials for washing machines and tumble dryers over the years, but I've yet to see an ad for a clothesline or a clothespin. Clotheslines and clothespins used to be as common in American life as iPads and restraining orders are today. What happened? We all know nature is a better and cheaper energy source than electricity. Fresh air smells so much nicer than a fabric softener. Your child can't close the cat inside a clothesline and then press the "on" button.

Chalk it up to progress. Someone thought it would be a good idea to invent a machine that cost about 800 times as much as a clothesline, replace warm summer breezes with a rotating tumbler that drowns out all human communication (especially if you're drying sneakers), and then replace the fresh aromatic smell of the outdoors with an artificially scented dryer sheet that prevents clothes from clinging together, which is fine but would be totally pointless on a clothesline.

I enjoy looking at old sepia photos of New York from the turn of the century (not this turn, but the last one). All those dozens of clotheslines crisscrossing high over alleyways from one tenement to the next-- now that was laundry! Every last inch of line was taken up with petticoats and bloomers and undershirts -- it's a wonder people weren't naked on washdays. When all that clothing was reeled inside after a day in the sun, I'll bet not even Yankee Candle could match such a scent.

My family owned just one house when I was a kid; otherwise, we moved from apartment to apartment. That house had the biggest back yard in Palm Springs North, which was a new development not too far from the Everglades. (We didn't see alligators, but we saw plenty of swamp mosquitoes so big they wore their own gang colors.) Kids would come over to play in our back yard and never be seen again. I'm talking about a big yard. Along with the yard came four lengths of clothesline, our first, and my mother was out there every weekend with her basket of clothes and sheets. I didn't have many chores, but one of the most important was Official Clothespin Pail Carrier. I would stand beside her holding up a pail with a rooster painted on it, and she would take two clothespins from it for each article of clothing (more for sheets). She held one clothespin between her teeth while she fastened the first one on the line, and then she'd take the other one from her mouth and fasten it to the other end of whatever she was hanging. Then we'd take a couple steps and the ritual would repeat itself. Odd, but I can still remember the sound the few remaining wooden clothespins made as they scraped against the bottom of that metal pail.

Automatic dryers don't sound like that. I don't think anything sounds like that. It's a loss, really. Things just don't sound like the things they've replaced. The new sounds are impersonal, not at all tactile. Take personal computers. Click-clacking away on one of those keyboards sounds like rodents doing a two-step. I know whereof I speak -- I'm using one right now and it still makes my teeth ache. But think back -- if you're old enough -- to manual typewriters. Folks, when you hit those keys, that sheet of paper knew you meant business. Not even the YMCA could give you a better workout. Electric typewriters weren't as taxing, but the sound still implied permanence. Remember All the President's Men? Remember that very first shot, a tight, silent closeup of a blank sheet of paper, then the thunderous whump of the key as it hammers home the first enormous letter? Could you imagine opening that movie with a tight closeup of a blank computer screen, the silence suddenly shattered with the sound of -- of what? A gerbil fart?

But I digress. I'm not saying these newfangled contraptions are a setback of some sort. They're a godsend for large families. Women would weep when they won one on Queen for a Day. I've even heard women say that when you sit on one, the vibration is good for -- um, good for drying clothes. But I digress again.

I've often used Laundromats, but I think they could be improved upon. Even if I took along an autographed copy of the New Testament, I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs without thinking, "God, I'm sitting in a Laundromat." Maybe it's those curvy plastic chairs. Maybe it's the magazines with cover stories about Lincoln's assassination. Maybe it's the coin changers that make me flatten my dollar bill about fifty times before it'll suck it in. I don't know what it is. I use one now, but it's full-service, so I can drop my clothes off in the morning and pick them up all clean and folded in the afternoon. I don't mind spending the extra money, since to me it's not just a service but a survival tactic. Each time I leave with my bulky plastic bag in hand, I wave a dollar bill and stick my tongue out at the coin changer.

I'm been cat-sitting for some friends. They have a clothesline in the backyard, some wooden clothespins on a shelf, and they've left instructions on how to use their washer/dryer.

My clothes feel awfully dirty. Guess what I'll be doing later on. (No, not sitting on the dryer.)