Dixie Divas
Finding the simple things again
By RONDA RICH

Ronda Rich

The simple things in life, I think, are missing. Things that served us well but the moment that technology magically appeared, we discarded them without a second thought and rushed on.

Like clothes lines.

Clothes lines were practical, functional and all telling. Eyes may be the windows to one's soul but loaded clothes lines were the windows to a family's life.

"You can tell a family by the wash hanging on the line," Mama would always say.

Yes, you could. You could tell if the husband was a blue collar or white collar worker, the gender of the children, the household's financial shape (dingy, ragged clothes versus stylish ones) and the physical size of the matriarch.

Mama hung out clothes like she decorated a cake. Sheets and towels came first followed by clothes then ending with underwear and dish rags. She tapered down from the large pieces to the smallest ones. I remember often how Mama would then step back, fold her arms across her chest, smile with satisfaction and say with deep contentment, "Now, that's a pretty wash!"

Remember how fresh the clothes smelled after a day blowing in a spring breeze?

"Looks like it's comin' up a cloud." Mama would frown. She would eye the darkening summer clouds from her perch at the back porch screen door and issue her instructions.

"You'd better run and get the clothes off the line before it starts. Looks like it's gonna be a bad 'un."

Barefooted with shades of red Georgia dirt clinging between my toes from the day's previous adventures, I would dash out the door, just in time to see the lighting as it flashed boldly over beyond the creek. At the next crack of ominous thunder, I would jump almost out of my skin. My dog, Pinto, not much more than just a common ol' country yard dog, would dance around my bare legs as I snatched sheets, towels, underwear and mama's house dresses from the clothes line. Sometimes I would beat the big watery drops back to the house. And sometimes I didn't.

Perhaps in the scheme of today's world, it isn't much of a childhood memory but it is sweet to me...not so much for what it says about that time long ago but for what it says of the simplicity that is missing today.

Gone, for the most part, are backyard clothes lines. Electric dryers and subdivisions with unyielding covenants took care of that. Mama held out for a long time, though. She's Scotch-Irish, through and through, and saw no point in wasting money on the appliance or the electricity it would require to run it. Even after she got the clothes dryer, she'd still hang her sheets and towels out, saying, "I just love the fresh smell when they dry outdoors."

But even Mama, frugal and fresh-smell loving though she is, eventually gave in to the store bought clothes dryer because of the convenience and, perhaps, because I wasn't there to run out and gather up the clothes in case of a cloud comin' up.

And that's another thing.

It's only the old-timers, and traditionalists like me, who talk about a cloud comin' up. Once a popular phrase in the Southern lexicon, it is disappearing like Chestnut trees and old country stores.

At the new house I've built in the country, I'm gonna have myself a clothes line. And a screen door, too. Because nothing sounds so comforting as an old wooden screen door slamming against an old wooden door frame.

And when it comes up a cloud, as surely it will from time to time, I'll dash out the door barefooted, with my dog Dixie Dew, frolicking behind me.

And then, for a brief moment, I'll find myself back in a simpler place and time.

Ronda Rich is the author of The Town That Came A-Courtin' and What Southern Women Know About Flirting.