So, when was the last time you stepped outside your back door with a wicker basket tucked under you arm filled with a big bundle of freshly washed clothes?

When I was a kid we used to have a clothesline in our backyard, one side of the line attached to the house and the other to a big tree at the far end of the property.  It was during the energy crisis, the one in the mid-1970s, and dryers were taboo; everyone line dried, doing our part to save electricity.   Or so I was told (and believed): now, as a father and bill payer, I clearly see the wisdom in my parent’s positioning.  After all, public school teacher’s salaries only went so far, energy crisis or not.

The clothespins were kept in a hanging bag that was kept on a nail in the side of the house just outside the back door.  I remember the dread of blindly reaching in and searching around for the pins as the bag always had some kind of creepy crawly trying to call it home: it was always the big ones like locus or crickets. Luckily, I had a little sister and laundry was a “team” effort.

A sea breeze, usually gentle on clear summer days, but sometimes fierce as storms started to brew, would whistle through the backyard.  I have clear memories of crisp white sheets, long shirtsleeves and jean legs dancing around in the wind.  And there was the smell of the laundry detergent and the fresh scent of the sea as we ran between the lines when the loads were so big that we had to double up. We needed lots of pins on those days.

As kids earning a dollar a week allowance, it was our job to take the dry clothes in.  For some perspective, at ten to one- (allowance jobs to a dollar) -our laundry service was worth a dime a session in those days.  Big money for little people, looking back it was also an early lesson in getting paid to do something you very much enjoy.  After all, it was way better than vacuuming the living room or bringing in garbage cans from the curb though maybe not as good as washing the car or unpacking the groceries.

There was a certain freedom of balancing all by your self on tiptoe on the top step of the old wooden ladder.  Reaching just high enough to unclip the pins without toppling over, the clothes wrapping around you as you managed to free them from the line and guide them gently into the basket below.  The only thing that mattered in that moment was not letting them hit the ground.  There was such a clear sense of purpose.

I drifted back there today.  Standing on my side yard, hanging clothes on a line.  It was warm and the breeze was gently blowing in from the sea.  The locus and crickets were singing all around me.  I smiled thinking about the old wooden ladder and how it was no longer needed, about how much I have grown and how far I have travelled.

It was a nice place to return to after all these years, an easy, simple pleasure: you should step out back and visit sometime…