Clotheslines

By Harry T. Roman

I’m sitting on my back porch, cuddling our dog Storm, and staring at the massive oak tree at the edge of our property. There, about 10 feet up the tree, is a partly buried metal clothesline pulley, the bark of the tree each year hiding more and more of it. From the pulley’s point of view it is being slowly swallowed up.

Just a few moments later, I experience that familiar dizziness as my middle-age mind whirls me back to the 1950s, to a place where many city lots intersected, and I can see and smell freshly done wash hanging out in the bright summer sun. I am in the back yard of our North 5^th Street home……488 North 5^th Street to be exact.

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Every back yard had them. Usually they were attached to a house window with a pulley so you could hang the clothes and push them out from there. Some folks had them attached to a post or wall on their back porch. These clotheslines terminated on an ancient, and often cracked, wood pole usually in someone's yard—sunk in the ground near an equally ancient back fence.

The clothesline often came with the house when you purchased it. How it and the pole got there is anybody's guess. In all my years living in Newark, I never remember a pole ever being installed anywhere. As far as I knew, they could have just grown there. Perhaps it was a secret clause written into a house deed, or an apartment rental?

Most of the poles had climbing spikes, giving the impression that someone could climb it, if brave enough, and attach a new pulley and rope. But that's another funny thing, I never saw anyone climb one of the poles and make a repair or install a new pulley. I guess somehow folks changed their clothesline periodically to avoid a failure, making a pole climb unnecessary.

You could simply open the clothesline, attach the new rope to the old rope, and pull it out to the pulley at the pole; and while keeping tension on the line with the other hand weave the new rope through and connect it to your end---another urban technique now gone the way of buggy whips.

I might add that in all my years in Newark, I never saw a clothesline fail. I guess they made the lines strong to avoid such problems. They used to make the line out of a tough plastic outside coating, with a weave of cotton and metal strands inside. My mother's clothesline seemed to last forever. Today's rope strands wouldn't last half that long.

Some houses simply used a local tree as their own substitute pole. This worked just fine until the tree grew and swallowed up the pulley, making it necessary to install a new one. I wonder how many backyard trees have pulleys inside them? I guess those gas and electric dryers have been responsible for the consumption of many a clothesline pulley.

Because of a high backyard fence in our neighbor's yard, it was not possible for us to hook up to the local clothesline pole at our 5th Street house. Dad and I put two steel poles in our backyard for our own personal family clothesline. We used thick T-shaped pipe set in concrete to house a double clothesline for Mom. She always had plenty of clothes to wash with 3 kids.

We had a dryer, but for the big stuff, Mom used the clothesline. The clothesline-dried fabrics always felt and smelled different than the ones processed through the dryer. And they often felt a bit stiffer too. Our old Hamilton dryer was bought in 1957 when my youngest sister was born, and Dad used it into the later 1980s, repairing it countless times. It was as tough as the old clothesline.

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I’m back on my porch again, getting licked in the face by Storm. I have shirked my duties in petting him while away on another Newark nostalgia trip. He so reminds me of our old feisty family dog, Spike.

I have a little treat for you readers out there. I found this poem on the Internet. It came with no author to credit it to, so I’ll simply repeat it here for you to enjoy.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE CLOTHESLINE?

A clothesline 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 tablecloths
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,

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!

Author Unknown

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Clotheslines

By Harry T. Roman

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