My mom never had a pedometer until late in life. By the time someone gave her a Fitbit, she was worn out from all the steps she had taken in her life. In her day, people didn’t need a watch on their wrist to remind them to walk a certain number of steps each day. Besides, they walked miles, not steps.
Our lives are more sedentary now, so much so that we need these electronic alerts and calibrated alarms to command us to stand and to walk so we don’t get stuck in our chair like a dill pickle in a jar. Back in her prime, when my mom fell asleep at night—often it was midnight before her head hit a pillow—her feet hurt because she had walked so many miles that day.
While it would be difficult to divide the steps she took into categories, it is safe to say she spent many hours behind the stove preparing home-cooked meals for us. I don’t remember any quick meals that she put in front of us. Even barbecue weenies came with hand-cut French fries. And, of course, microwaves weren’t a thing yet. I can remember the linoleum floor in front of her stove worn thin by her footsteps, in the same way the area in front of her sink was worn because she washed so many dishes there. Dishwashers—meaning a machine—weren’t a thing either.
Aside from those worn paths in the kitchen that my mom made with her steps each day, I often think about another one—the path beneath her clothesline. I’ll go ahead and say it. Clothes dryers weren’t a thing then. My mom walked many a mile beneath her clothesline. With a houseful of children, she washed loads of clothes and each load had to be hung on a line outdoors if they were to be dried. It was the way it was done in her day.
Of course, prior to her day, women didn’t even have the benefit of a clothesline on which to hang wet clothing. The ancient Egyptian women washed their clothes alongside the Nile and placed the clothes on rocks to dry beneath the sun. Native American women did the same thing. Pioneer women on the plains used any shrub they could find on which to lay wet clothes. It became a problem for them when a winter blizzard was in town. They had no choice but to lay the wet clothes outdoors where they froze stiff as a lacquered prize fish on a board above the mantle.
Later, my grandmother often talked about the “wash house” that she had on the farm. It was a small structure separated from the house. Inside the one room wash house was a large, black, cast iron wash pot in which the work clothes were put into boiling water that had been warmed by a wood fire beneath it. The clothes were stirred in the pot by a large wooden stick or paddle, and homemade lye soap was added to clean the clothes.
Often women in that day liked to use a “blueing” agent, especially with the whites. I still remember my grandmother pouring the blueing onto her clothes in her fancy new washing machine. I guess it was a habit hard to break, or she thought the newfangled detergents were not up to the task. She may have been right. I understand you can buy blueing today, which leads me to believe it still has a purpose.
As a small boy, I often wandered into the wash house when we went to the old farm, although the wash house was not used anymore for washing clothes. In fact, I don’t remember anything being in it except some of the old stuff that had been used to wash clothes. I suppose—if someone had the inclination at that late date—they could have built a fire and warmed water and experienced the old-fashioned method of clothes washing. Nowadays, I occasionally see one of those old wash pots used as a flower pot, which must feel like a devastating demotion or defeat for these solid and stoic soldiers more used to the heat and hustle of battle.
I must say I found the wash house to be dark and damp, with nothing but a dirt floor and a strange smell in it. I have no doubt spiders loved it. Probably snakes also. I suspect they were not strangers to my grandmother when she washed clothes there. Now, they had the freedom to roam and to explore without fear of being squashed by someone’s foot or slapped in the face by someone’s hand.
I recollect reading once that Mondays were considered “laundry day” in pioneer times. Come Monday, the dirty clothes from the prior week were hauled in a basket to the wash house or to an outdoor place where the washing pot was kept and where water could be heated. These first-hand reports suggest that it was an all-day project and a grueling one. Maybe that’s why it was done on Monday–they had rested up for it on Sunday.
Needless to say, it was not the one step process we know, but instead it included many steps. It started with hauling water from the cistern where rain water was collected (and preferred because it was soft water), then building a fire to heat the water, after which there was “agitating” the clothes with a wooden stick, followed by lifting the hot clothes out of the pot, and finally hanging them on a line when they had cooled off so you could hold them in your hands.
We can see that made for a long day and for sore arms and legs. And there still was ironing to be done, with a heavy steel iron that was heated on an open fire. We also want to remember that people had large families in those days, and where there are more people, there are more clothes to wash. Monday after Monday. Year after year.
In time, clotheslines became a staple of country homes. Strung between two t-shaped poles, these lines—made of rope, then of wire—made it easier for women to hang wet clothing outdoors to dry. A pioneer woman thought herself to have an East coast home (their definition of modern) when she had a clothesline in the backyard or beside the garden. The wooden clothes pin or clothes peg secured the piece of clothing on the clothesline—unless the wind was wild as a pack of wolves in the woods of Wisconsin. Then nothing short of nailing a shirt to the side of a barn would keep it in place.
Hanging clothes outside always carried a risk. Those wild winds, yes. Rainstorms, yes. Dirt cyclones, yes. But it also was not beyond a playful dog to see the swinging clothes as a challenge or as a target. I have chased down just such a dog with a piece of clothes between his teeth. Another risk, although I don’t recall experiencing it, was the theft of pieces of clothing from the lines while they were drying outdoors. The theft this time was done by a human, not by a dog. The theme of stolen clothes from the laundry line was a staple of many old movies, especially for an escaped convict who needed a change of clothes, or for a naked person who didn’t want to walk down the road au naturel.
Digging up my memories much like a farmer digging up turnips, I still can see my mom carrying a load of laundry in a plastic basket out to the clothesline where she would reach in—piece by piece—and clamp the clothes onto the line with the clothespin that often was waiting between her lips, which seemed to be the way to coordinate the effort with only two hands.
We like to say practice makes perfect. She must have perfected her skills at putting pieces of wet clothing on the line. Also, with skill came speed. She moved steadily and speedily down the clothesline, with never a break, except when she heard the cry of one of her children, watching her from behind the kitchen screen door.
I helped once in a while, so I know it isn’t as easy as the spectator on the bench thinks. As I recall, she liked to keep the same items side by side on the line, so that shirts were in one place and pants were in another place. It’s the same methodology we use today to put items on our computers into ‘folders.’ I don’t know if there was a practical explanation for it, other than it was easier to use one clothespin to attach two similar pieces of clothing together on each end with this method. Maybe it looked better bunched together by similarity like neat rows of vegetables in a garden. A more experienced hand probably could tell me the reason.
My mom had four laundry lines, not the more typical double lines, because she had so many children, and so had more clothes to dry on the lines. She walked back and forth with measured steps almost like a drum major on duty. She welcomed the help of my sisters as they got older and tall enough to reach the clotheslines and, I must say, they became very efficient at the task, much better than I was.
Once all the wet clothes were on the line, then it was up to the sun and the wind to partner together to finish the job. I have heard people to this day argue that there is nothing better than the fresh smell of clothes wind-dried outdoors on a clothes line. Perhaps it is true. But I can’t remember the last time I saw clothes blowing in the wind, taking in those sweet smells of the outdoors. So, the fresh smell of the outdoors must be second to the static smell of machine-dried clothes.
Interestingly, some of our ways of speaking still have phrases that refer to the bygone days of clotheslines. The first phrase is “hanging someone out to dry,” which, as we know, means to abandon someone in a dangerous situation. The second phrase is “airing your dirty laundry,” which all of us knows means to bring to public attention matters that are better left private. Those of us who experienced the embarrassment of our underwear on full display on the clothesline for any visitor or passerby to see easily understands this phrase.
As small children, we found our mom’s clotheslines to be useful for something other than the apparent use. We included them in several of our games. Sheets on the lines especially were useful. We made clubhouses from the wet sheets, although sometimes we would have to rearrange the sheets to provide us with four walls. Similarly, sheets were useful as overnight tents, although—looking back—I don’t see how they protected us from anything in the night.
I have a distinct memory of the morning when my mom woke my brothers and me from our sleep inside our “tent” made of these sheets where we had spent the night. She wanted to tell us that she and my dad were on their way to the hospital so she could have my baby sister. I was eleven at the time. She returned two days later with my sister in her arms. I always associate her birth with our overnight camp out in that makeshift tent on Mama’s clotheslines.
When our games with the clotheslines became too rowdy—such as swinging from them—the result was a fallen and a useless line on the ground. It happened quite often. Either we underestimated our weight or we overestimated the strength of the clothesline. But in both cases the line popped and fell to the ground. Then, my mom would have to wait until my dad could reattach the wires to the poles.
In the meantime, she would walk to my grandma’s house next door—maybe a hundred yards’ distance—and she would use my grandmother’s clotheslines. With hindsight, it is clear we increased her workload, for which I apologize belatedly. It could not have been easy carrying both ways those baskets of wet clothes those many steps.
I began to see the task of doing laundry in a new light some years ago when I read a wonderful little book by Kathleen Norris that she called “The Quotidian Mysteries.” Another thing I learned from the book was the definition of quotidian. Ordinary or very common. (I don’t know why she didn’t just say ordinary.) Aside from that infraction, Norris cast in a new way the chore of doing laundry. She explained it as an expression of love for the people with whom we live. It is in just such ordinary tasks that we show love to others, she said.
Looking back on my Mama’s countless hours at the clothesline, I now understand what Norris was saying. Love is found as surely in washing clothes and in hanging them to dry, just as it is in cooking a meal and in washing the dishes. It is through the ordinary and the common things that a person does for us that we can find the clearest and purest expression of their love for us. Instead of basking in the exceptional signs of love, we should enjoy the everyday signs.
I know you can still buy a clothesline. Amazon has a collection from which to choose. Some are indoors, others are outdoors. I’m sure other stores also sell them. I don’t think these clotheslines are popular items, although I could be wrong. I just don’t recall seeing a clothesline in a backyard in a long time. When my sister bought her house and it had a clothesline, she had it removed.
The last one I saw was something a friend put together at the front of his garage. He had a problem reaching it because he was short. He improvised, putting his clothes on hangers, and then using a stick to place the hangers onto the clothesline. He said the dryer shrunk his clothes, so he preferred a clothesline. I’ve also heard the complaint that the heat of a dryer is hard on clothes, especially some fabrics. I learned that lesson when I washed and dried a wool sweater.
I thought about my mama’s clotheslines again today when I put my clothes in the dryer. It is laundry day. I didn’t wait until Monday. I reflected on the ease of washing and drying clothes in our time. Maybe 15 seconds to start the washer and maybe 10 seconds to start the dryer. Then a couple minutes to fold the clothes.
And I thought about the hours that my mom spent each week washing our clothes and hanging them out to dry. When I go to my memory bank where I store all my valuables, I can see her doing it—thousands of steps she took beneath those clothesline until a path was worn into the ground, like rabbits do in the grass, and I can feel her love in every single step.
—Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 