This was a documentary from 1981 by Roberta Cantow. I remember it as a bittersweet tale of women and work. I am hoping that I still have it somewhere on videotape. I think I got it off PBS.
"When Roberta Cantow, an ex-New Yorker who in 1981 made a documentary called 'Clotheslines,' she found women all over the city willing to talk about the sentiment and folklore invested in the seemingly simple task of hanging clothes out to dry.
"'I don't want to over-romanticize it,' she said. 'But amidst the drudgery, there was pride in their work.
"'There was even an aesthetic to it,' she added. 'Their neighbors didn't see their laundry in the drawer, but on the line. So they would hang clothes by color, by size, creating works of art that would be scrutinized and judged.'" -- Ezra Goldstein, New York Times
This might now carry over into how women feel about the clothes they take to the laundromat and how they feel about what others may think of their clothes (dinginess, holes, etc.). I say women because traditionally this has been "women's work". And it used to be a badge of how good a wife was at her "job".
I still hang laundry up, things that can't safely go through the dryer. But there are no clotheslines in our basement. I wonder if there are clotheslines in *any* basements anymore. And forget a backyard--we don't have anything but a parking lot all around us. So I hang things on wire hangers, then hang those from the shower rod. I still find myself hanging things in a certain order, so that it looks pleasant and balanced. It's almost as if its genetic.
I remember having to run out with Grandma and get the sheets down quickly if a storm was coming. And I remember her teaching me how to set the wooden poles just right so that they wouldn't flop over and take the clothes down with them.
At one place we lived, the next-door neighbours used to burn trash, mostly leaves. It seemed they always did this on the days we had wash hanging out in the backyard. Urgh. Of course we had to get the clothes in then so they didn't smell of smoke. That might've been when we finally broke down and got a dryer, which my mother thought was the height of luxury.
Do any of you hang up laundry, inside or outside? Or have memories of it? If so, what?
hungry
thoughtful