Reflections on the Clothesline

Published June, 2012

            I remember "laundry day" from when I was a little boy, and I don't miss it.  Monday was the day to do the dreaded chore, and that seemed the norm for most families.  Oh, how we prayed in church on Sunday for rain on Monday, because if it rained, we couldn't do laundry, because you see, we had a clothesline. 

            My sister and I were POLs, Prisoners of Laundry, for the entire day.  Washing of the clothes was well under way before us kids got out of bed, and as soon as breakfast was done, we were outside getting the clothesline ready to accept the hanging.  We got the clothespins down from the wall on the back porch where they hung in a bag sewed from mattress ticking, and carried them out to the line.  This was a misnomer, because it wasn't a line, it was several.

            Our clotheslines, four of them, were strung between two "T"s made of welded, three inch, pipe.  They were at least eight feet tall.  It was my job to take a ladder and a wet rag and wipe the wires used for lines.  In west Texas, where sand storms were the norm rather than the exception, this was a necessity, or you would end up with brown strips on whatever you hung on the line.  I enjoyed this job.  When I had reached as far as I could on the wire, I would grab it with both hands and swing like Tarzan to the ground, and then move the ladder.  My father, who had to tighten the lines, frowned on this, so I made sure that mama wasn't looking before I did it.

            As I grew older, so did my involvement in hanging the clothes.  My sister and I would carry #10 washtubs of wet laundry to the lines, and, under the direction of mama, we would hang clothes.  There were rules to this, and they were precise.

            Clothes were hung in a certain order, and to this day, I do the whites first.  Sheets and towels were hung on the outside lines so that the neighbors, or a stranger passing by, could not view the unmentionables hung on the inner lines.  Heaven help us if anyone knew we wore underwear.

            You hang socks by the toes, not the tops, pants by the cuffs, not the waistbands, and you never, never hang a shirt by the shoulders, always by the tails.  If you didn't, you would have to go back and re-hang them so that there wouldn't be pinch marks showing on daddy's shirts.

            We were required to be efficient in our use of clothespins.  We always overlapped an item with the previous one, and used one pin to hold both.  This also had rules.  You never hung a colored item with a white one.  You hung reds with reds, and all the other colors together.  Dante, and Milton haven't a clue as to what hell is like until you hang a red sock with one of daddy's white, dress shirts and it bleeds a pink spot onto it.  Hell smells like bleach as you scrub the stain out, and the odor is in your skin for days.

            It mattered not a hoot to my mother if it was freezing out, we hung the clothes anyway.  I think she preferred it.  On those days, I learned the phrase "freeze dried".  We would take the clothes off the line, shake them out to get rid of any ice crystals, and lay them neatly in the tubs to carry back in the house.

            Folding the sheets was mama's job, because we were not tall enough, but we were warned, "Your day is coming, watch how I do it," and it was magical.  The sheets were hung over the line length wise, and she would fold the sheet on the line back on itself, and continue to do so until it was a perfect, folded square, and it never touched the ground.

            Laundry day rules required that all the clothes be off the line, folded, ironed, and put away before dinner.  The pins were not to be left on the lines.  That was considered very tacky.

            Looking at a neighbor's clothesline was almost as good as looking through their window.  There were no secrets when you hung out the clothes.  If there were more sheets than usual, or they were out on a day other than Monday, mama knew someone was sick, and would take over some soup, and bring back a load of laundry for us to do.

            Diapers or tiny clothes announced the birth of a baby.  Hanging the fancy sheets and towels told that company was in town.  You could tell the ages of the children by looking at the clothesline, and mama, when house shopping, would always go on a Monday to find a neighborhood with children the same age as my sister and I.

            A bare line on Monday meant that the family was out of town.  When they came back, it was sagging with the weight of all the clothes dirtied while they were gone.

            I miss the clothesline…almost.  I don't miss the work, but I miss the tradition, and playing hide-n-seek, and tag, up and down the rows as mother struggled to hang stuff while we played.  It makes me smile and laugh to remember.  I also miss the smell of sun and wind dried clothes.  I loved to run head long into a dry sheet and take a deep breath as it wrapped around me.

But clotheslines now are of the past,

For dryers make work much less.

Now what goes on inside a home,

Is anybody's guess!

I really miss that way of life,

It was a friendly sign 

When neighbors knew each other best...

By what hung out on that line.

                                    Author Unknown

A Fine and Pleasant Misery

Published April, 2012

            I have borrowed Patrick McManus' title to his book on the joys of camping because I couldn't think of a more appropriate phrase to describe what I have been through.  I spent three days and two nights in the woods of Blakeley State Park with the Princesses and thirteen of their closest friends for a church girl's camp.  From the moment of temporary insanity when I agreed to be the male presence for this activity, I began to dread it.

            I am no new-kid-on-the-block when it comes to camping.  If you added up all my days I've spent in the out-of-doors, sleeping in the woods, deserts, and mountains of our earth, they would total more than a couple of years, but I have never spent one like this.

            Some camping trips are pure misery, while others are fine and pleasant.  This one was both, and they all may be, but this campout is worthy of note.

            This trip represented the first time in almost nine years that I had put up a tent.  It had never bothered me to throw down a sleeping pad and sleep like a baby on the ground, but that was almost a decade ago, and things about my body don't bend and fold like they once did.  Getting down isn't much of a problem since it is aided by gravity, but please, explain to me what made that same gravitational force multiply in the night to where it takes a crane to get me off the ground?  I get ahead of myself.

            The weather for the day of the trip called for rain in the morning, clear for afternoon departure, which caused great jubilation in my heart, as there is nothing more miserable than setting up camp in the rain.  My rejoicing was premature.

            We arrived in great, beaming sunshine.  Everyone, even I, the curmudgeon, was delighted.  We took all the gear off the truck, spread it out in preparation of setting it up, and the rains came, soaking everything.  My heart and several other organs sunk.  Let the misery begin.

            My mistake was that I helped set up the other tents first.  Guess whose was the only one on the ground, flat and open, when the sky opened up?  Yep, mine.

            Wet and I do not get along, especially while attempting to sleep.  I threw down my tent poles in disgust and went to sit in the cab of my truck.  To their credit, the Princesses tried to help, but wet is wet, and no amount of youthful exuberance will dry me out physically, or spiritually.  I pouted until the rain stopped.

            I attempted to back my truck, with the tailgate down, closer to my campsite.  The windows were fogged, at least that is my excuse, and I backed the truck smack into a tree, ruining the tailgate.  I put my head down on the steering wheel and tried to imagine the trip getting any worse, and tried to think of a plan by which I could go home.  I came up with no plan, and things got worse.

            I was soaking wet from sweating in my rain gear, which I opted to be out of to be soaked from the dripping trees, but at least I was cooler while being miserable.  I managed to get the tent up, the floor mopped up with the only towel I brought, and get my bed set up.

            For this campout, I was going to sleep four inches above the ground.  I brought a queen-sized, inflatable mattress.  At least I would be sleeping damp on a soft mattress, rather than on the hard ground.  The added height would aid me in rising in the morning.  I could roll over and fall to my knees instead of struggling up from flat on my back.

            When it came time to turn in, I was quite smug, knowing the other leaders would be envious of me.  I didn't say anything, but I felt superior, and was anxious for a good night's sleep.  I undressed, unzipped my damp sleeping bag, and started to lie down.  I didn't make it.

            The mattress had deflated since I had set it up.  It had a leak.  I wasn't feeling so smug as I calculated that it was near 11:00 PM, and the mattress had deflated over a period of near eight hours.  If I reinflated, I would have a like number of hours of comfort.   As dawn approached, I would once again be on a squishy cushion of air, I figured it wouldn't be too bad.  I figured wrong.

            With my added weight, air was forced out of the leak, and by 2:00 AM, I was sleeping with my torso on the ground and my feet elevated, the remaining air being squeezed to the lighter end of the cursed mattress.  I determined that sleeping flat on the hard ground was preferable to this, and pulled the plug to let the remaining air out.  Again, I was wrong.  I was damp, cold, and aching.  It was a fine and pleasant misery.

            The morning dawned bright and beautiful.  I cooked my blueberry pancakes and sausage over and open fire, and started a new day.  I was tired, my truck was broken, and I had only the hard ground to look forward to, but the sun was out, the girls were happy, and I was to lead a hike of over five miles.

            When we got back, the Admiral had sent another ground pad, the tent and sleeping bag were dry, and things were looking up.  I was tired from the hike, but the girls had enjoyed it, no one was lost, or broken, and not many bitten.

            The campout had shifted its focus from "misery", to "fine and pleasant", and I was reminded of something I had preached during our travels, "The only difference between an adventure and an ordeal is attitude."  I need to work on the "fine and pleasant" within me for next decade's campout

The Day Has Come and Gone, and I Am Still Here

Published 7/20/12

            I have quirks and eccentricities, as we all do.  I have never denied or hidden mine, but some I have not acknowledged except to those closest to me.  Herein, I celebrate the passing of one such quirk, or, some might say, phobia.  It has been with me for almost twenty-three years, but it has run its course, expired, is no longer valid or useful.  It is gone, over, finished, and I am done with it.  Well, sort of.  July 11^th marked its end.  On that day, I had been alive on this earth, one day longer than my mother was.  That day has haunted me since she died.

            Losing a parent, or any loved one for that matter, is not an easy thing.  Such an event serves as a glaring reminder of our mortality.  Even if we are familiar with death, due to war, sickness, accident, or any form of demise, the death of a parent signals to us that the previous generation is expiring, and shouts, "Hey, you're next in line." 

            There is no logic to my unusual attachment to the time of my mother's passing.  I am an educated man of some intelligence, although there are those who would argue otherwise, thus it is assumed that I could, or would, reason that my mother's death is uniquely hers, and mine is in no way attached to, or influenced by her passing.  That would be reasonable, but emotions often rule my thinking.    

            It is observed by the family that I favor my mother.  I was slight of build as a child, as was she, fair, not dark like my father, Germanic, not English, aggression from both sides, and the list goes on.  If I favor her in life, why not death?      

            I am attached to her, as well as to my living father who will be 89 this year.  I share twenty-three chromosomes from each.  It is logical and reasonable that I could live to be as old as my father is, or older, but emotion allows me to think that the things that have happened to them, could, or will happen to me.  If we inherit all we are, eye and hair color, stature, intelligence, predilection for diseases, and longevity, why not timeliness of significant life, or death events?

            So it is, that with all this reasoning, whether intellectual, or emotional, that I have both anticipated and dreaded my sixty-fourth year.  It has come and gone now by a month, a week, and several days.  I have overcome the genetic tendency on my mother's side, where the females' lives are notoriously short, and now look forward to becoming an octogenarian…at least.

            What does all this mean?  I don't know.  It isn't logical to think that anyone of us is attached that closely to another, yet, I wonder.  Do we inherit addictive tendencies such as drug and alcohol abuse, or anger as opposed to passivity?  Are those traits inherited, or learned, or some of each?       

            Some have proposed that we inherit fears and attitudes.  In a book by a prominent minister, the story is related of a boy who had an unreasonable fear of school.  He had been a well-adjusted child with normal growth and learning, but when it came time for him to start school, he was terrified beyond the normal fear of going into a new situation.  He could not make it through a day, and often, could not even get to school.

            The parents and teachers, along with counselors and psychiatrists worked for months with no improvement.  All were baffled until one day, the father of the boy was relating to his own father the problem they were having.  The grandfather then told the family of an incident in his early childhood related to a school bully, which caused him great fear until it was resolved.  With this information, the mental health professionals were able to treat the boy who went on to have a successful school experience.  Was this fear of school passed on, skipping a generation, and if so, how?

            I do not know the answers to any of this.  You can see where reason and logic have gotten me.  I am sure that my time here is uniquely mine, and although tied somehow to those who have gone on before me, I cannot add to, nor diminish it by any thought or action on my part.

            I saw a phrase on a t-shirt in the gym long ago.  It read, "Eat right, run far, lift heavy, die anyway."  There is great truth in that comedic effort.  We can prevent some diseases by proper diet and exercise, and by taking care of our bodies, maybe prolong our days, but the message was not concerning quantity of life, it was about quality.

            None of us knows when we are going to depart this world.  I have spent twenty-three years with this nagging little doubt, far back in my mind that I would not live longer than my mother.  I haven't belabored it, or been obsessed with it, but it has been there.  I have learned one thing from this that we all already know, and that is that any day, any moment, could be our last.  That, combined with the saying on the t-shirt, have made me realize that it is the quality of our days, not the quantity, that we should focus on, and that I should live every day as if it were my last by pouring everything I can into it. 

            That sure puts the twenty games of Solitaire I played before, and during the writing of this piece in a different light, doesn't it?  Live on, and live well, for life is before you, not behind.