PULLEYS AND POSTS
I love my clothesline. Maybe that’s a sign I’ve finally turned into a country frau,
but I do. It’s fastened to the corner of our house off the upper-level deck, so about it’s 18 feet in the air. (We can get onto that deck from our second floor bedroom.)
The other end of the clothesline is attached to a tall post way out in the field.
There is no more centering activity on earth than hanging out clothes on a summer day in Iowa. How long since you’ve sunk your nose into a pile of towels fresh off the line, smelling of the sun? Or heard sheets whipping in the breeze?
I bought a 16-foot 4x4 and read all about how to sink it in the ground so it would stay put for many years. Turns out for a post to be stable, at least 25% of it must be underground. I set out to dig a 4-foot deep hole, which is not easy in clay. Clay has its own brand of suction. You stick in the spade, and you try to pry an opening in the soil, but clay clings together with impressive tenacity. You’re lucky if you can get the spade out. Most people just give up. That’s why you see abandoned shovel handles in the fields all along Interstate-80.
Not one to be easily deterred, I fetched our auger and twisted it down to a depth of 4-inches where it promptly jammed. I ripped it out with a little clay, poured in water, stirred it up, scooped out the slurry, and twisted the auger down another couple of inches. It took me most of the day to dig down 4 feet, but when I was done, it was the most perfect post hole anyone had ever produced. It was the requisite 4-feet deep but only 6-inches across, and since clay does not crumble, it had perfectly smooth walls.
When my husband came home and saw that deep, narrow, perfectly crafted hole, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could dig such a thing. “What on earth kind of shovel did you use?” he asked. (His ice auger did get a little dull from the rocks and roots it went through, but truthfully, he wasn’t that fond of ice fishing anyway.)
I stood the pole in the hole, poured in the cement, and then painted the post sky blue on top and grass green on the bottom so it would not be a blot on the landscape.
The clothesline goes through a pulley on the corner of the house and another pulley out on the pole so we can hang clothes from the deck and send them out over our meadow to dry in the sun and ever-present wind. A full, heavy load dries in under an hour.
Our place is so windy that we never have to iron; our clothes are beaten into a wrinkle-free state. Sometimes we find pajama bottoms out on the septic field or socks in the dog pen, but otherwise it works very well.
I am happy to report only one clothesline-related injury, and for me, that is a miracle. I had finished hanging up a load of laundry, and it was waving merrily in the breeze. As I turned to start back down the deck, I happened to glance around the corner of the house. About 6-inches from my face was a little triangle––a triangle with eyes. How many things with eyes have a triangular face? And it was that strange pinkish-tan of a Weimeraraner.We stared at one another. It cocked its head right, left, right, left.
I concluded this was an insect about 4-inches long, and it was sizing me up. I ran as fast as I could down the deck. That is, my torso ran down the deck. My sock caught on a nail so my feet stayed put. I aced physics so I know: stationary lower body + sprinting upper body = face plant. And no, I do not always wear shoes.
My husband was pretty impressed with my injuries. “How do you skin your chin, elbows, hands, knees, and forehead but not scrape your nose?” he asked.
“Bug,” I mumbled through the blood. “Large ugly bug,”
My son laughed his head off when I told him about the incident. “How can you be afraid be of a little Chinese Mantis, Mom?” A few weeks later, when he was painting the upper deck, I heard him scream like a 3rd grader. And I smiled.
Other than the occasional tree frog in the clothespin bag and wasps on the railing, it’s just me out there. Me and the freshest smelling clothes in the world and a 270° view of wild skies and beautiful fields. I often pause to watch the fields change from green to gold and back as clouds move by––not a bad backdrop for a household chore. But just as I will forever shake out my towel before I step out of the shower (so another mouse won’t fall out on my feet in the bathtub), I will always peek around the corner of the house before I reach for the clothespins.
There are those who think I have an unnatural relationship with my clothesline. If you prefer your lint filter and those poison-infused softening sheets, so be it. The sun will never shrink
my favorite shirt or twist
my underwear around a sheet so that I need scissors to set it free. And I will never ever see anything as cool as a cannibalistic Chinese Mantis in my laundry room.
More on the Chinese Mantis:
More on clothesline pulleys:
http://www.lehmans.com/store/Natural_Goods___Cleaning_and_Laundry___Rustproof_Clothesline_Pulley___3318?Args=/
Note: Within 5 seconds of posting this entry, I had pop-up ads for clotheslines, cut-rate dryers, and laundry products. No pest control companies so far.
