It’s summer, the living is easy and the Legislature is debating weighty subjects like clotheslines.
State senators only spent a few minutes on the topic during their Tuesday session. But that was probably a few minutes too long discussing the merits and disadvantages of stringing a lightweight rope around wheels attached to two securely-anchored points.
At issue was a proposal that would allow condominium owners to string clotheslines provided — to indirectly quote Sen. Michael Barrett — “you don’t infringe on the aesthetic your neighbors might have.”
While allowing condominium owners to “exercise some choice and some option” in their clothes drying preferences, Barrett’s bill allows for debates on clothesline use merits and drawbacks by town or city officials and condominium associations before condo owners break out the clothespins.
Barrett, to his credit, managed to keep tongue firmly in cheek when he discussed his proposal in the Senate chamber. He also pointed out that electricity-powered clothes dryers are leading offenders when it comes to energy use. Clothesline users, in his view, are energy savers worthy of state recognition.
But Barrett extolled the merits of clotheslines as a low-cost, energy saving alternative without mentioning its social and poetic beauty.
What image more readily conjures up memories of a simpler time and no-hassle living than clothes flapping on a line in a summer breeze? In cities like Lynn with apartment buildings and triple-deckers built a few feet from one another, clotheslines provided a communication line between neighbors.
It is hard, never mind downright rude, to stand on a porch and not speak to a neighbor while you pin clothes on a line. How many generations of neighbors in urban America resolved differences or talked about current affairs while hanging clothes from a line?
How many young lovers passed notes back and forth on clotheslines shared by adjoining apartments? How many kids played hide and seek to their mothers’ eternal annoyance by hiding behind sheets drying on a line?
The list goes on and on. But the romance of the clothesline is similar to the American romance with the front porch and the backyard. It’s something that reminds you of your grandparents and probably reminded them of their grandparents.
Frivolous as his bill might sound, maybe Sen. Barrett hit on something by extolling the virtues of the humble clothesline on an idle summer Tuesday.
