Newsday, published June 9, 2008.
By Joyce Pellino Crane
Just out of camera shot was the carousel clothesline I wrote about in this humorous Newsday essay. To my right: Dad, Mom, my sister, and brother (front).
The shouting matches started shortly after my family moved into the Dutch Colonial house across from the town’s public high school.
Mrs. Gibson, a widowed socialite with a butler, a poodle, and a two-toned Cadillac, had never expected to see a family of Italians next door.
But there she was in her twilight years battling the reality of a changing society. The tony New York suburb, known for its debutantes and coming out parties (this was an era when coming out wasn’t followed by “of the closet”) was being infiltrated by the nouveau riche with last names ending in vowels. Mrs. Gibson wasn’t ready for it.
They arrived with screechy station wagons, smudge-faced kids, and religious statues on the front lawn.
She upbraided. My mother retorted. The words got nasty.
So I can only imagine her apoplexy when she saw my father cementing a carousel clothesline in our side lawn, and my mother hanging clothes from it. The blight was visible from all angles, including Mrs. Gibson’s windows.
When I read about the controversy in Southampton, NY, over outdoor clotheslines and their impact on property values, I felt compelled to speak up. I applaud town officials for repealing the ban on hanging clothes.
That first summer in our home, was also my first year of life. I’m told Mrs. Gibson’s window shades went down on the day we moved in, and—except for when she was spitting nails from an open window–never came up again until she passed away years later.
Though this was an era when most middle class households were equipped with modern appliances, our first dryer wasn’t purchased until longer after I left for college, some 18 years after moving to the house. The decision had nothing to do with money. My mother simply didn’t want one.
So throughout my junior high and high school years, my schoolmates would stare out classroom windows at my mother’s waving laundry. She had an unchangeable system: unmentionables were (thankfully) hung on the inner ropes and meticulously surrounded by increasingly larger garments—my brothers tiny shorts, my skinny pedal pushers, my sister’s sleek shifts, my mother’s billowy housedresses–until my father’s shirts and workpants flapped cordially.
It never occurred to me until now that my mother was single-handedly bringing down property values in that Westchester County community.
In an era when green is cool and sustainable design is trendy, how many of us think twice about the energy consumed each time we load the dryer?
If I had the nerve, I’d run a clothesline off my back patio. I’m certain the sight would startle my neighbors, but I can’t think of a more practical invention. Hanging laundry not only conserves electricity, but it introduces fresh air and exercise in between computer stints.
Years ago I took a trip to Prince Edward Island. As I rode my bicycle amid the sea sculpted landscapes, so stark yet alluring, I found myself drawn not to the ocean and its white sand, nor the blue herons wading in the estuaries, but to the clotheslines adorned with garments. Instead of scenery, my photographs were of rippling threads. I was struck by the incongruity of the deserted yards and buttoned-up homes against the obvious telltale signs that people with rich lives lived inside.
If Mrs. Gibson had lifted her shades all those years ago, perhaps she might have learned something about the people next door.
I don’t think our elderly neighbor lived long enough to see our gas dryer arrive, but somehow she endured us in spite of herself.
Joyce Pellino Crane, a freelance writer and frequent contributor to the Boston Globe, is writing a memoir of the post World War II years. She can be reached at crane@globe.com
