The Country Clothesline

....still common today. (Click picture for larger view)

"Happy, twice happy, you who dwell in the country, if you only knew the pleasures which surround you!" ~ Virgil

This is a common sight in the farmlands of the midwest. Barns and farmhouses with clotheslines in the yard; more often than not they are filled with drying laundry, overalls, t-shirts, underwear and socks.... many socks. Those warm winds sweeping down the plains will dry pretty quickly along with the added heat from the sun. There is nothing like the smell of laundry dried on the open line. Unfortunately, there is also nothing stiffer than laundry dried this way.

My grandmother's house was over 100 years old and in the dank and dark basement sat her old wringer washing machine. The machine would agitate the clothes with the soapy water... always hot back then. When Grandma thought the dirt was out, she picked up a shirt or sock or pair of pants with a huge wooden fork and fed it through the rollers of the wringer, into a waiting wash tub of warm water. We would help her dunk and dunk and dunk those clothes in the rinse water and send them back through the wringer. Then into a second fresh tub of clean water. After the second dunking, she would always feed the clothes slowly, sometimes twice through the wringers and into her basket. Then we headed out to the line stretching across the back yard. She quickly hung those clothes and then we waited. Sheets always came out white as new fallen snow and stiff as a board. Overalls could stand on their own after drying on the line. There was no Downy and certainly no Bounce dryer sheets back then. Oh but what fun an eight year old could have, running and hiding between the sheets and towels and what trouble she would be in should one of those items fall to the dirty ground due to her antics.

Grandma eventually got a dryer when Grandpa built her a new house, but they never did take down that clothesline. Above all Grandma was practical.... that newfangled dryer might just break down one day, and where would she be without her clothesline?

Submission to PhotoFriday for topic "the country". (end of post)