By Clyde Noel

Side of Clyde

Most people in Los Altos dry their clothes inside their house, in a clothes dryer. The machine spins the garments in vicious cycles, pumping heated air on them. As the clothes tumble, odd sounds come from the machine until they are dry, and then the machine stops automatically and gives out a signal so you can take them out and place them neatly in your bedroom armoire.

One of the things wrong with today’s society is most people have become too pretentious to hang out their wash. It seems we are missing something, because clothes dried outside by the sun and wind have a much better feel to them.

The aroma of naturally dried clothes is one a lot of people don’t experience anymore. Maybe one reason people are grumpy these days is their underwear rides up and smells like coils and filters instead of fresh sunshine. I haven’t seen any wash hanging on a line in Los Altos or Los Altos Hills for years. In some small homes in Mountain View, yes - but in Los Altos, not even on a Monday.

Where I grew up, in Pennsylvania, people always did their wash on Mondays and their ironing on Tuesdays - and people didn’t mind hanging out their underwear for the world to see.

It was a farming culture that said, “My privacy is important, but I’ll hang my drawers on the line if I want to - and if some have holes in them, so be it.”

Our neighbor, Minnie Rose, hung her clothes on a line in her back yard for everyone to see. She wore those pink bloomers that hung just below the knee and had legs large enough for a full-grown man with thighs like ex-President Clinton to crawl into.

On Mondays, when Miss Minnie hung out her entire line of bloomers, it looked like opening day at the races with flags flopping on a mainsail.

Our back yard looked the same when my mother hung out the freshly washed sheets, pillowcases, socks and underwear. The warm winds of March and April flapped those sheets, producing comforting sights and sounds.

When you crawled into those fresh, windblown sheets at bedtime, it felt cozy and restful. The only time I ever heard my mother complain about hanging out clothes was when birds flew by and she had to take them down and rewash them.

Washday became less of a chore as society moved from doing clothes in washboards and tubs to automatic washers and dryers. These days laundry can be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in full-size formal laundry rooms.

According to a report from the National Association of Home Builders, about 75 percent of homes in the country now have a separate laundry room instead of having the washing machine in the kitchen or basement. Some new laundry rooms in Los Altos Hills are as large as 400 square feet.

Getting back to Miss Minnie’s washday, she had a neighbor, Lou Anne Dye, who was prissy and religious and sang in the church choir. She also did her wash on Mondays and placed her dainty step-ins on her clothesline.

One evening a group of mischievous young men who will remain nameless sneaked into Miss Minnie’s back yard and took her bloomers off the line. They then slipped into Miss Dye’s back yard and took down her cute little step-ins with the days of the week embroidered upon them and replaced them with Miss Minnie’s pinks.

The Dyes, I remember, were the first family in my hometown to buy an electric clothes dryer.

- Noel’s column appears monthly in the “Your Home” section of the Town Crier.