"Hang 'Em High!!"

In my growing up days in rural North Carolina, it was a common site to observe, behind or to the side of house after house, freshly laundered articles of clothing fluttering in the breeze. Mother nature's warm sun was given the task of drying load after never ending load of laundry, each having had as much moisture squeezed out from the crumpled folds as the hand-cranked wringers atop the tub washing machine could extract. It was the rare and noteworthy oddity if a particular farming family in the immediate community also possessed an electric powered dryer. These blessed folks were considered to be rich beyond comparison, only being trumped by the truly well-off farmer who not only possessed the requisite two mules to work the land, but a John Deere tractor to boot. That was considered to be living in "high cotton" indeed! The patriarchs of the family farms that I rubbed shoulders with as a young boy considered the mere thought of spending good money on an electric dryer to be a subject void of any lingering discussion. I'm pretty sure, however, that the matriarchs of those same families collectively would have voiced a differing opinion. That nullifying decision having been made, the affixing of the family's weekly laundry on row after row of sagging clotheslines remained the accepted and necessary practice.

Our more affluent city cousins, flush with additional expendable capital, opted to forgo the free drying benefits of solar power and readily embraced the convenience of an inexpensive Sears & Roebuck electric dryer. Ah, the good life.... No more did the lady of the house have to trudge back and forth from washing machine to clothesline to hang and retrieve her family laundry, making absolutely certain that any of her "unmentionables" were discreetly obscured from public view on an available line between the the bed sheets and towels. (This during the era when Ricky & Lucy slept in separate beds and television advertisers dared only mention toilet paper euphemistically as "T.P.") Now the little lady could remain sequestered in the comfort and privacy of her own home, saving countless hours attending to the thankless task of assuring her family had fleshly laundered clothes.

Here's the rub... Seems what once was old is new again. A growing number of our city cousins have determined, for various reasons (to save money and/or to do their small part in addressing what they consider to be the global warming issue), why not string up a few clotheslines out behind the house? Whatever floats your pontoon, I always say. However, not so fast... Entering into this back-to-nature excursion like a bull in a china shop comes the proprietors of community standards; the all too powerful condominium and home owner's associations who are dictating that one can't just decide to willy-nilly string up a bunch of non-compliant clotheslines within the confines of their well-manicured communities...even if it does save the planet from going up in an inglorious puff of smoke. So heated (pardon the pun) and acrimonious has the debate become in some communities that the issue is being weighed in local courts of law.

Me personally? I hope the clothesline aficionados win every single one of their cases. Not that I buy into this wholesale scam that global warming is going to cause the Gulf of Mexico to soon begin lapping at my backdoor if we all don't immediately begin to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but because I thoroughly enjoy the prospect of deflating the pompous balloons of the few who in far too many instances narrowly dictate the parameters of how one is to conduct one's affairs based on their closely held convictions of propriety. Give me a break... The argument that spider-webbing one's backyards with clotheslines filled with laundry is somehow going to further reduce the value of their neighbor's home might hold some degree of validity if every other house on the block didn't already have a for sale sign stuck in the front yard.

You can't have it both way people.... Don't jump up on your soapbox and out of one side of your mouth preach to me that we all need to junk our gas-guzzling SUVs for more fuel efficient vehicles, re-cycle and conserve by any means possible, and then out of the other side of your mouth tell some cash-strapped family trying to keep their home from going into foreclosure that they have to continue to use their electric dryer so that your neighborhood doesn't sacrifice it's pristine flavor.

String 'em up people...and if you have any nylon clothesline left over, hang your laundry on it as well. (I'll be along later to check out your unmentionables.)