Google is not being helpful. Seems like it's been posted and talked about in blogs and discussion boards and local newspapers all over the country, with no mention of an author. The "new" Google is fairly hopeless. I think the "old" Google would have nailed it!!
Linda the magnificent found the title AND author: "The Clothesline Said So Much" by Marilyn K. Walker. Now we know.
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!
I went digging too and found a title and author for the poem -- "The Clothesline Said So Much," by Marilyn K. Walker. Along with it, I found these delightful "Basic Rules for Clotheslines." http://ylcf.org/2010/05/the-basic-rules-for-clotheslines/
ReplyDeleteMemories of clotheslines and wash day...
ReplyDeleteWhat fun it was to run along the lines of cool, damp sheets with the wind blowing. But we better have had clean hands!
I used to spend my summers with my grandparents in their cottage along the Susquehanna River. We always knew when it was Monday -- mounds of soap suds floated down the river from town.
Days before George was born and I was in a full on nesting mission, I washed and hung out all the new cloth diapers (nappies). I wanted to make certain that the cloth that touched my new child's skin was free from things than might irritate. It made a pretty picture all those nappies flapping in the warm September sunshine. The smiling and excited neighbours popped heads over the fence and asked if the baby had arrived. The question was answered when I came out from around the washing. Ooh! Not yet.
ReplyDeleteI loved poking the sheets that were boiling in the copper with the copperstick, then helping mum put them through the mangle by turning the handle, and then helping put them on the line and propping the line up with the clothesline prop, a long piece of wood with a notch in one end, used to keep the clothesline taut.
ReplyDeleteLinda: You have super googling powers! My washday chore was emptying the rinse tubs, dipping the water from the tubs and pouring it down the drain. I adored all the splashing around. Later I got to starch my dad's shirt collars, and later still, iron his hankies.
ReplyDeletePeggy: I have a photo of you taken the very day George was born. You were supervising Ian & Sean's breakfast before you left for the hospital. If I knew how to post a photo in a comment, I'd put it up.
Shammy: Your chores were quite INTERESTING--more than mine, that is.
The thing I remember most about laundry day when my brother and I had polio was the woman mom hired to help her with the wash weeping loudly in the basement over her grandson, who had just been killed in WWII.
I recall a photo of my mother with a huge black tub being heated over an outdoor fire where she did the laundry with a scrub board years before I was born. None too pleasant in an Ohio winter as she also described the clothes sometimes freezing on the line. When I came along years later I recall an indoor machine with a wringer. (I have an old miniature hand crank wringer I played with as a child.)
ReplyDeleteWhen I had my children during the years we lived in AZ, Phoenix had been designated as a trial community for a new product called, Pampers. I used a few for certain occasions, but mostly I used cloth diapers in my automatic washer. I preferred sun to dryer heat. I could hang a load on the line and they would be dry by the time my next load of clothes finished washing. I always hung our sheets out to dry and they smelled wonderful.
Joared: In the coldest months, my mother hung the wash in the basement on lines strung above the pingpong table. There was no hanging laundry outdoors in Fargo in the winter. It would be frozen before you could get it over the line. The scent of sheets dried on the line outdoors is indeed heavenly. In Bismarck at the log house, I used the dryer, though. Why? Because deer came into the yard at night to snack on the garden, and they relieved themselves under the clotheslines. No THANK YOU!
ReplyDeleteI still love clothesline-dried clothes, but I'm the only one left in my neighborhood who still does a full wash on the line - underwear, too - on Saturdays. Rainy Saturdays mean the dryer is back in action. The D.N.
ReplyDelete