Sunday, August 24, 2014

Remembering simpleness . . . .


My chenille bedspread drying in the breeze
About a month ago, our dryer broke on a weekend, no less.  It spun and spun, but no heat  - on any cycle.  I had a damp lump of colors just tossing around in air.  Being obsessive/compulsive as I am, I was determined to get my laundry done.  Plus, I didn't really know how much the repair would cost and if we could afford it that particular week.  So I was on a mission to hang a clothesline just to get that load dry.  My first attempt was to string crochet yarn in the basement and I made some pretty tight lines.  Only problem was that when I hung up my laundry, the lines either sagged or broke.  So off to Super Walmart.  I found the laundry aisle easily and picked up a package of clothespins - the clip on kind.  I spotted a roll of clothesline, tightly wound and wrapped in plastic.  I scanned all the available hooks and there were no empty ones, but also none that had any kind of gadget to hang the clothesline on.  Over to the hardware department, same result.  I saw the manager and asked him and he said they didn't have anything like I was talking about.  How can you carry clothes pins and clothesline, but nothing to mount it with.  My husband was waiting in the car, and I told him we had to try Lowes.  What they had was one of those umbrella tree things, and a retractable line, which I bought.  He mounted in in the yard and it was great, I hung all my wash out and it dryed quickly.  The repairman came and the dryer needed a part, about $200 so we were set.  So today, I was washing my bedspread, and saw that the line was down.  My husband said, why aren't you going  to use the dryer - and snapped the line up tight for me again.  It reminded me of 36 years ago when I moved to Jackson as a young bride with a 2 year old son.  We had a T-Bar clothes line pole at each end of the yard, with a tight line that stretched from one end to the other.  Mrs. Hack next door had an awesome line, her T-Bar had about five separate lines on it, so that she could hang a whole day's load of wash on it.  Many days I would hang the wash before leaving for work, hoping that it wouldn't rain.  Often when I went to retrieve my wash it was still damp, if it was a humid day, or fresh and clean smelling if it was a breezy day.  You could virtually tell the weather by the feel of your line dryed towels!  When winter came, the towels would be stiff as a board, but would loosen up after coming back in the house. My daughter was born in January, cold and snowy, and I draped lines in the basement so I could dry our clothes when the dryer again inexplicably failed.  On a summer day, the kids would love to run through the wash, sometimes pulling it from the line, or using it as imaginary walls for their dream castles.  Times were different, much simpler, not packed with so much stuff to do, so many places to run, so many appointments to keep, so many electronic gadgets to look at ,  and so many bills to pay.  We had time, time to enjoy the simple things, time to hang wash on a backyard line and to draw it to our face for the smell of freshness while taking it down.  Take some time today to bring back simple.