Country Roads

Who still hangs out their clothes to dry on the clothesline? I’m talking about the clotheslines outdoors, not on stands in the bathroom or basement. I remember when about every household had a three line wire clothes line where all the washed clothes were hung out to dry.

I used a clothes line when my sons were young. I enjoyed going outside and hanging our family laundry on the clothesline. The cloth diapers were sanitized as they blew dry in the sunshine. There was nothing like bringing freshly dried bed sheets in and smelling the crisp freshness.

My mother enjoyed hanging her washing on the clothesline my father had constructed for her with wooden posts and telephone wire. It also had three wires. She hung the clothes in a predetermined order. Jeans, slacks and shirts were hung on the back line, the under garments were hung on the middle line and the sheets, blankets and towels were hung on the wire closest to the road, so the under garments could not be viewed by those traveling by. It was so much fun when the sheets became dry in the warm summer sun, to run through the sheets back and forth and hope mother didn’t catch my sisters and I doing that.

When I was a child, my job was to stand beside the clothes basket and hand mother the clothes pins as she hung the clothes out. I would hand mother two clothes pins at a time and I’d watch with much interest as she would hold one in her mouth while placing one pin on the clothes item, and then she would quickly add the second pin. I learned the hard way not to play with the wooden, spring loaded, pins by opening them too wide as sometimes they would snap my fingers, or snap apart ruining the pin.

When I grew taller, I was not assigned to hang the clothes as I guess mother felt she was the only one to hang the clothes up properly. My duty was to help take the clothes down off the line and carry them into the house without dropping any.

Hanging out the clothes was done the year around. It amazed me how mother would bundle up and take the wet clothes outside in the cold and hang them up. When they had hung out all day in the winter sun with the breeze blowing they eventually would dry. Some said the clothes were “freeze dried.”

Today’s household would not be without an automatic washer and dryer. It’s so much simpler and faster to do the laundry, but there are some wash days I long for my clothes lines of years’ past.