In the middle of a once in a lifetime (from my lips to God’s ear) viral pandemic, my dryer tried to kill itself.
As I scooped dog food out of the 600 lb. bag of dog kibble (I believe in being prepared) I noticed my left cheek burning with the heat of a thousand suns. The heat was radiating out from the side of my stacked dryer.
“That ain’t right,” I whispered to no one. “Sherwood!” I howled. “The dryer is trying to burn the house down!!”
We turned the dryer off. “That’ll fix it,” we said. And it did. Of course the heap of slowly souring laundry cried out for relief, and that’s when I re-discovered the clothesline, clothes pins, and the sweet smell of line-dried clothes.
Things I’ve discovered from hanging laundry after a fifty year hiatus.
1.) The sky. The wind. The weather. Hanging clothes on a line will put you back in touch with real, unconditioned air. I am one with the elements.
2.) The smell is beyond science to replicate. I don’t care what chemically treated product you toss into that electric clothes shrinker, outside has a smell all its own: clean, fresh, light, pure.
3.) My clothes, hanging all in a line, is a task that satisfies my need to work and do and accomplish. I can see a pattern in my doing. It completes me.
4.) FYI: I want to be wrapped in line-dried sheets upon my death and buried in the back pasture.
5.) Towels dried in the sun become one part Brillo pad and one part sandpaper. Whatever germs are still creeping about on your body after washing with the highly scented, overly artificial soap of modern hygienic practices, a sun-dried towel will scrape those critters right off into the dustbin of history.
6.) Americans got soft the day clothesline-dried towels became electric dryer fluffed cotton balls warmed in the belly of a fossil fuel sucking, fire breathing, lint burner.
7.) Number six is just a theory.
I pull a wet sheet from the basket, clip it to the line, watch it flap gently in the breeze, and breathe deeply. It smells like my great-grandmother and the sun and the earth and the peace of quiet things done well.
The repairman will be here Monday. Sigh.
Linda (Fresh Scent) Zern
