There really was a time when there were no gas or
electric dryers and hanging the laundry on the line was a daily part of
life. Of course this was somewhat a seasonal chore, as winters in the
midwest wouldn’t allow clothes to be hung out of doors. They would freeze
on the line of course. The alternative during these cold weather months
was to hang them all around the kitchen and laundry area.
There were many adjunct benefits to the laundry being dried on the line
besides the obvious sanitation by the sun and the fresh air smell to the
clothes once they were brought in. It was an undeniably enjoyable smell
and I remember it well as my Mother, who was raised on the farm in
Nebraska, often hung laundry on the line well into the 1960’s.
In addition to those aforementioned benefits to this practice, there were
others.
For one, laundry on the line could be an endless source of fascination,
mystery and play for the children. The imagination could run wild and I’m
sure more than one young boy or girl imagined the white sheets to be the
sail on “Sinbad’s” boat! While hanging laundry, the very small children
were often being watched over by older sister or mom while the men were
out in the fields working. I remember as a very small child myself being
fascinated by the movement of these marvelous sails and brightly colored
fabrics as they danced against a background of deep blue sky and clouds
floating by!
Here we find Allison wrapped up in the flowing sheet, enjoying the wind
and sun as they play out across her head and shoulders. She twists
slightly to look down and around, “Now where did that little one scoot ?”
These days of hanging laundry on the line to dry may be mostly gone, but
every once in a while you can see clothes out to hang. There must be
something to it when with all our technical advances we still do something
the old fashioned way, “the way we were”.
