DIANE MAKAR MURPHY In choice of dryer vs. sunshine, I'll hang tough

There's something about a laden clothesline that makes me homesick, that makes me want to climb right into a Little Rascals short feature. A clothesline hung with so many clothes that long, metal-tipped wooden poles have to be wedged between the rope and the earth to keep the towels from touching down.
Not that I want to wash my clothes and hang them. No, not that. I've tried that. What I want is a neighborhood where that still happens. Where MOM hangs out the clothes, and I'm not the mom.
You see, when I hung out the laundry, the results weren't what I expected. And I'll never do it again.
Coin-laundry virtues
I had spent most of my then-adult life (that is the ages from 18 to 24) using coin-operated laundries, which was not necessarily a bad thing. They actually have quite a few virtues. For one, you can do your laundry at odd hours and not worry about waking anyone up. You can also do all of your laundry at once if you have enough quarters. Then, to save money, you can shove the loads from two or three washing machines into one huge dryer.
Coin laundries also sell neat little boxes of detergent, which are similar to those neat little boxes of cereal you usually get only on vacations. (ipso facto: Coin laundries are like little vacations.)
Best of all, if it's crowded, or a small laundry, you learn to do what I call "air folding." Air folding is an enviable ability that one uses to neatly fold shirts, pants and whatnot without a folding table. People who work at Old Navy, Hollister and several other clothiers also have this skill. (My husband does not, since he rarely used coin laundries. He admires mine greatly.)
The drawbacks
But, even so, the limitation of a coin laundry was that I could never hang out my clothes to dry, to reap the benefits of blue sky, bright sun and warm breezes. I had to rely on big vat dryers, which, incidentally, if you think about it, were the first really boring reality show. (What else could you watch, besides the hairy-backed guy in a tank top reading a year-old Reader's Digest or the mom pulling the lollipop from her kid's hair?)
When we moved to Houston, however, we rented the first-floor apartment of a two-story duplex, which boasted a washer, dryer and a small back yard. It also had a clothesline. That's all the invitation I needed. I bought little wooden clothespins and a clothespin bag; no expense was spared.
It was with extreme glee that I carried my laundry basket full of clean, wet clothes to the back yard. I had heard such glorious tales of fresh-air drying. Not only was I saving money and electricity, I was going to have whiter, sweeter-smelling clothes. My clothing was going to be wonderful.
I hung out each piece with love, doubling up as my mother had when I was a little girl, when I ran short of clothespins. I had not used fabric softener because all I had were Bounce sheets, and besides, the sun would fluff my clothing, wouldn't it?
The line wove back and forth across the yard, and I filled it with sheets and shirts and shorts. When the last pillow case left the laundry basket, I stood back and admired my work. It was as good as a Norman Rockwell painting. I was done; the rest was up to Mother Nature and that glorious, hot Texas sun.
The hard reality
Four hours later, I came back to check my laundry. It was dry all right, but it was also stiff as an ironing board and covered in bird dung. Not just an occasional dung, but the droppings of an entire flock. An entire flock of geese, maybe, or ostriches.
Nothing was salvageable. I looked at the trees overhead and felt -- as I do, far too often, then and now -- stupid. I stacked my clothing up like cordwood and took it in to the washer.
That was the last time I hung out clothes to dry. Now, when I pass a clothesline, I think, "That person must have some skill I don't." But can they air fold?
In the end, I don't care; I have clean clothes just the same. And if I've made a pact with the devil, his name is Whirlpool.
murphy@vindy.com