usadeepsouth.com
World Peace -- one pair of bloomers at a time
by Beth Boswell Jacks
Since most of my newspapers run Snippets on the Opinion page, I figure every now and then I should express an opinion. Hubby G-Man says no. He says my job is to entertain, not persuade, assure, convince, convert, or opine. But I am the stubborn sort who wants to keep this job, so today I'm going to jump all over this opinion business.
My opinion is that folks would get along a whole heckuva lot better if we still had clotheslines.
Blows my mind to think that the younger generation hardly knows what a clothesline is. Can't you hear the archeologists generations from now:
"Hey, Mack. Look here. What's this?"
"Oh, you know what that is. That's one of those things people ages ago hung their laundry on to dry. Hard to imagine, huh?"
Well, I think it's a shame our kids will never know the pleasure of securing sweet smelling towels and cloth diapers in neat little rows on the clothesline as the warm sun blesses their whole being. They'll never know the pleasant banter, neighbor to neighbor, across the fence as the laundry hanging proceeds -- followed most certainly by a leisurely cup of coffee.
You see, clotheslines helped make good neighbors.
As I reflect on the demise of clotheslines and their value to peaceful relations, I am reminded of the time G-Man and I strung our clothes out a hotel window, mainly to dry them, but, as it turned out, also in a grand gesture of good will.
We had embarked on a vagabond trip to Europe --backpacks and Eurail passes -- to see our daughter Bethany who was teaching English in Nagykoros, Hungary. Since we were traveling with backpacks we had only a few changes of clothing, so by the time we reached Vienna we were down to nothing but a bunch of dirties.
"I'm not paying 5 bucks for the hotel laundry to wash a t-shirt," G-Man fussed. "I can wash everything we got in the bathtub."
I didn't argue. Who cares? So he started scrubbing while my attention went to the gathering crowds outside our fourth floor room's big double window. Strange things were happening on the Blue Danube.
As I helped G-Man string the t-shirts and underwear on a makeshift clothesline fashioned from the twine of the window blind's pulls, I noticed the crowds were getting thicker. Big ol' stretch limousines were pulling up across the street. On the sidewalk below were guards with guns and all kinds of fawning folks and newspeople with cameras, and many of them were looking our way.
Was our little clothesline attracting the attention of the good citizens of Vienna, Austria? Were we to be the big story for the 6 o'clock TV news-sprecher? Were Viennians sorely missing their clotheslines too?
Well, nein. As the semi-clean laundry frisked at our heads in the balmy Austrian breezes, we perched in the window, exchanging neighborly waves as Jimmy Carter, Warren Christopher, the Dalai Lama, and many more way-up-there honchos exited their limos.
These folks were attending the United Nations' World Conference on Human Rights, see? That's what we found out later. What you bet after glancing our way they entered that high-falutin' United Nations conference hall with grins on their faces, totally prepared to discuss weighty issues of the world in a calm, harmonious fashion?
Yessir, I'm convinced they did -- all because of our neighborly greetings and flip-flapping, sun-soaking, water-dripping, conflict-ripping clothesline.
That's my opinion.
Beth Boswell Jacks, editor of USADEEPSOUTH.COM, stays happily engaged (in addition to her other writing) with a weekly personal essay/humor newspaper column titled Snippets, which she describes as an attempt to "joogle a bit of Southern wit and wisdom in a few snappy paragraphs." Contact Beth at BethJacks@hotmail.com.
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Read about Beth's SNIPPETS books -- two collections of her columns.
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