My mom and I were having a good laugh about the dogs in our past and the crazy little pranks they pulled to drive us crazy. She was telling me about one of the many dogs of her youth that loved pulling the laundry off the clothesline and scattering them all over the yard. Hilarious now, but I'm sure not so funny back in the day for my grandmother, who had to gather them up and start all over again.
My thoughts were taken back to the days of my youth, where one of my jobs was hanging the laundry out on the clothesline. While many homes enjoyed the convenience of having a clothes dryer, we didn't. My dad did not embrace new technology and he held on to the conventional ways of doing things. Poor mama didn't have a microwave oven until after daddy died.
Anyway, the job of hanging out the laundry to dry and bring them back in was mine . . . one that I was not fond of. It was a particularly frustrating job here in Florida during the summertime, when we get the afternoon storms like clockwork. Procrastination meant more work when the storm hit before the clothes came in.
It is amazing how something that was so much a part of every housewife's life has just disappeared from life as we knew it. The clothesline just died in our society . . . or I am assuming that it has.
Now that I think of it, I have a new found gratefulness and appreciation for my trusty clothes dryer.
The poles that housed the clothesline at my house now hold up plant trellises. As a working young adult, I had no time or desire to hang the clothes out to dry. Taking the clothesline apart was one of the first things I wanted to do when we bought this house.
I'm also grateful that I was born after the death of the washboard . . . what a workout that must have been!
