I  haven’t paid much attention to the old clothesline still standing at the end of the backyard at the house where I grew up here in North Carolina but it captured my fancy the other day.  

I stared at the rusting monument to old-fashioned clothes drying, a reminder of a time when it was practically an art to hang the clothes just-so, making sure all the pieces touched each other neatly and that under garments were discreetly tucked behind sheets and towels. A few of the old, battered clothes pins were still attached to the sagging lines.  

Come look at this clothesline, I told my daughter, and then recounted stories of how her grandmother taught me how to hang out clothes. I described the fresh scent of shirts and pants and linens dried by the air and the sun, how her aunts and I used to sneak and play tag as we ran between billowing sheets. I told her about the rule that meant my mother always sent us to bring in clothes on Saturday evenings, even it rained and they were still wet: No clothes on the clothesline on Sundays.  

Wow, my 15-year-old daughter said, “this is historical.”  I just smiled. 

A clothes line was a news forecast
To neighbors passing by.
There were no secrets you could keep
When clothes were hung to dry.   

It also was a friendly link
For neighbors always knew
If company had stopped on by
To spend a night or two.    

For then you’d see the ‘fancy sheets’
And towels upon the line;
You’d see the ‘company table cloths’
With intricate design.   

The line announced a baby’s birth
To folks who lived inside
As brand new infant clothes were hung
So carefully with pride.   

The ages of the children could
So readily be known
By watching how the sizes changed
You’d know how much they’d grown.   

It also told when illness struck,
As extra sheets were hung;
Then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too,
Haphazardly were strung.   

It said, ‘Gone on vacation now’
When lines hung limp and bare.
It told, ‘We’re back!’ when full lines sagged
With not an inch to spare.   

New folks in town were scorned upon
If wash was dingy gray,
As neighbors carefully raised their brows,
And looked the other way.   

But clotheslines now are of the past
For dryers make work 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 on the line!   

By Marilyn K. Walker  

What are some of your memories of clotheslines?  

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