Retro-Eco

The really fabulous thing about living out here in the country in a house various members of my family have lived in for more than 50 years is that many of the tools of the past are still around ready for use.  Sometimes, they break down due to natural age, and I have to make the decision as to whether or not it is worth it to replace them.

One item I have never had a moment's qualm about keeping in repair is the old-fashioned clothes line my grandmother had situated in the back yard.  She had hers originally strung through huge old fence posts and cedar trunks more than head high.  Even cedar gives up eventually, and the second year I lived here, I had to figure out what to do about it.

The vocational center at school has a welding program, and my dad had them build me a new set of posts, huge steel Ts, to hold updated line.  We set them in quick-setting concrete, strung them with the plastic-sheathed steel cable, and it was ready to go.

Until Katrina dropped a tree on it.

Some time later, we dug up the pole, took it back to school, got the top bar rewelded on, and reset it in the ground.  Since that time, it's been standing sentry like Granny's version did for so many years.

I don't use it all the time, but when I wash all my bedding, quilts, comforter, sheets, all, I use it to sun dry all of that whenever possible.  Today, I got up, stripped down the bed, took the feather mattress out and draped it over a porch stair rail, and began the process of laundering all the fabrics.  Then I carried each load out to the line and hung it up.

Even though it's an old-fashioned thing, I like it for several reasons.  First of all, it keeps me from having to run my dryer and heat up my house unnecessarily.  Even though the laundry area is out of the way, there's no reason to make things harder on my poor old air unit than they have to be.  Second, it's nice to feel like I'm somehow saving electricity.  It never ceases to amuse me that so many of the things that people now embrace as "eco-friendly," my grandmother did on a daily basis because that was all there was.  I suppose there really is nothing new under the sun. Finally, I love how it feels to sink down in the bed at the end of a day of cleaning and smell that freshness that only comes from something dried outdoors.

The only real drawback comes in the form of a never-ending worry that it's going to rain.  It's always a sort of lottery.  Today, for example, I went to Wal-Mart earlier, and I carefully checked the weather forecast before I left.  Nothing but clear skies.  While I was wheeling up and down the aisles, my phone chirped at me, and when I looked, a severe thunderstorm warning had showed up.  At that point, there was nothing to do about it.  I just sighed and moved on to the pet food, hoping I could get my shopping done and get home before the bottom fell out of it.

Well, the skies are still sunny although now and then a threatening cloud passes by.  In a couple of hours, I'll go out and gather everything in, make up the bed, finish up the chore.  When I do, I will feel connected to my Granny.  I remember going out to the clothes line with her to gather in the towels or Grandaddy's overalls.  I remember the little bag she'd made that fit on the clothesline that held wooden clothespins.  It's a small thing, but they are the ones that matter.

Uh-oh.  Even as I typed that, I heard thunder.  Time to get the clothes off the line, I think.....