In warming world, time to reconsider the clothesline

This time of year is the busy season, Mr. Gay says, noting a "massive uptick" in business as customers in the northern part of the country welcome spring by hanging clothes outdoors.

He describes two types of customers: The first are "folks who are trying to save money because the price of electricity and gas is going through the roof." The second group includes "folks who simply love to hang their clothes out." Young couples and older people are especially interested. Although customers are spread reasonably evenly across the country, he finds that Michigan, Texas, and California are especially popular states for clotheslines.

When they call to order a clothesline, many customers tell Gay, "I just want to be green."

Trying to be green with a simple clothesline, however noble a goal, sometimes comes with complications.

Once ubiquitous and essential, clotheslines are now seen as a blight on pristine suburban landscapes. Many local ordinances and condo associations ban them.

As a result, some of Gay's customers want to know how to hide a clothesline. "They're disgusted with these ordinan­ces," Gay says. In certain areas, residents are fighting back with "right to dry" bills.

Even clothespins can create a challenge. Gay cannot find a single manufacturer of clothespins in the United States. When he tells some customers that these products are made in China, he says, "I never hear from them again."

But mostly, customers are cheerful. "When people call me up and want a clothesline, they start thinking about their childhood," Gay says. They might remember helping their mother hang up clothes, or recall the fragrance of laundry when it's fresh from the line. And then there's the pleasure of watching sheets billow like sails, and shirt sleeves flap like scarecrows.

Clotheslines foster sociability. When most women were home during the day, it was easy for neighbors to exchange a friendly hello or chat over the fence as they tended to clothes on the line.

Still, nostalgia has its limits. Now that neighborhoods empty out during the day, dryers are often essential. It's hard to hang clothes by moonlight.

It's also easy to romanticize the pleasure of being outdoors on a sunny April day, pinning shirts and blouses on the line. Less rosy, perhaps, are memories of hauling heavy laundry baskets from the basement to the backyard, or dashing outside to grab laundry when rain rolls in.

Long live the dryer! But long live the low-tech clothesline, too. As members of a new generation try the novelty of drying clothes the old-fashioned way, they may come to share Gay's enthusiasm.

Calling clothesline users "some of the nicest people I've ever met," he says, "To me, a home looks like a home when there's a clothesline with clothes blowing out back in the breeze. It's a positive, not a negative."

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