Hung Out To Dry

Of the many potential friction points in a relationship, the debate between dryer v. clothesline is not to be underrated.

I was raised to believe that clothes snapped dry in the fresh air was the preferred method. Each week, baskets of wet garments, sheets, and pillowcases would be hoisted up the stairs and out to the backyard stoop. The line, anchored on one end to the house and to an oak tree on the other, ran the full width of our lot. 

Each item was attached using a wooden clothespin. Socks were clipped at the toe, shirts by the tail, pants at the cuff. A quick turn of the metal wheel made room on the line for sheets and pillowcases. Care was taken to pull the clothes in before dusk or the arrival of a passing thunderstorm. Most importantly, clothes were never hung on Sundays. That was considered laundry blasphemy.

The utilitarian clothespin remains a marker of my childhood. I can still conjure up the smell of clean laundry, just off the line.

“The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby activity among all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved at you, arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments, that taking the wind through their neck openings edged with lace, became for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible bodies." – Joseph Conrad