How We Communicate Has Changed

Across the Fence #484

Once upon a time in the world of communications, a real person answered the phone when you made a telephone call. Some of you can remember the days when you cranked your wall phone and a local operator answered and connected you with the person you were trying to reach. If you were calling someone on your party line you just cranked the long and short number of rings of your party and they answered.

People still use telephones, but how we use them has changed. I still remember our number was three long rings. When the phone rang we had no idea who was calling, but we always answered it. Chances were, it was someone we knew. I don’t think the term telemarketer even existed back then. Now we avoid them like the plague.

Things have really changed since those days. Now you’re more likely to get an answering machine or voice mail than a real person answering the phone. If you’re calling a cell phone number, good luck. Unless you send a text message, you’ll probably wait a long time to get a call-back if you leave a voice mail. It seems to me that people don’t like talking to each other anymore. They’d rather type and send text messages to communicate.

Fast forward fifty plus years from those days when we had a wall phone that you cranked. Now we have all kinds of fancy, high-tech phones to communicate. We also have call waiting, voice mail, answering machines, and different ring tones to let us know we’ve received a call. We don’t want to miss an incoming call from someone. But, we also have Caller ID on our phones and televisions that allow us to see who’s calling. Then we can decide whether we want to answer that call or pretend we aren’t home and just let it ring. If it’s a number we don’t recognize, or what looks like a telemarketing call, we can let the call go to voice mail and they can leave a message. Life has certainly changed, hasn’t it?

That was residential calling. What about business calls? Isn’t it great when you call a business and a real person answers the phone, instead of a recording that asks you to press a bunch of numbers? I work in the communication business. When you call our office, a person answers the phone. If all the lines are occupied, you’re asked to wait until someone answers, or you can dial the extension of the person you’re trying to reach if you know their number.

I bet you’ve called a business and the first thing the automated voice tells you is “Press 1 for English.” I thought this was America where English is the first language. All my grandparents came from Norway. They spoke only Norwegian when they arrived, but they all learned how to speak English. Norwegian was spoken when they were with other Norwegians, but English was used outside the home. Our parents didn’t try to teach us the Norwegian language. My father told us, “We’re in America and you’ll speak American (English)!” I guess that statement sunk in because it still irks me when that automated voice asks me to select English.

This story came about when I tried to book a hotel room recently. The hotel is located in Middleton, Wisconsin. Here again, I like to talk to a real person, so I called the 800 number instead of booking the room online. An automated voice answered the phone. I guess I should have expected that. Then I was given the usual press the number quiz, and yes, I speak English. Unfortunately, the person who finally answered was very hard to understand. I knew from the accent I was connected to a call center in India. I explained that I wanted to book a room for two nights and told him the dates. He wanted to know what hotel I wanted. I won’t use the name of the hotel to protect the guilty, but I thought I was calling the hotel location, not India. I told him the name of the hotel. He gave me the address of a hotel in Middleton, Ohio. I told him no, it’s in Middleton, Wisconsin. After having him repeat questions several times because I couldn’t understand him, I finally got a room booked for two nights. Then I asked for my AARP discount since I knew they had one. Hey, there has to be some advantages for getting old. He didn’t know if it was available and told me he would check. Pretty soon the line went dead and the beep, beep, beep started. 

I hung up and began the whole process over again. This time a woman answered, also with a thick Indian accent. When we got to my senior discount she also had to check and I expected the line to go dead again. This time she came back and said the AARP discount wasn’t available that weekend. I was so exasperated at that point I just booked the room.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk to a person in this country, at the place we’re calling instead of a foreign call center? Maybe that would help our unemployment rate too! I guess it’s too much to wish we could bring back that friendly, local operator.

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Drifting Snow Made Winters Tough

Across the Fence #483

We’ve had some huge drifts on Sherpe Road this winter. It’s reminiscent of past winters when I was young. At one time we were the only farm with access on this road. There wasn’t a lot of traffic traveling past our farm. Most days the mailman and milk hauler were the only people who used our road. It wasn’t exactly a place where you had to worry about traffic backups, unless you got behind our tractor pulling a wagon.

When we had big snowstorms, our road drifted shut and nobody came or went until the snowplow went through and opened it up. Arvid Harpestad was the snowplow operator in our area. He lived a couple of miles from our farm.

When Arvid arrived, he also plowed out our driveway and shoved the snow away from the machine shed so Dad could get the tractor out. He usually arrived around coffee time and Dad would invite him in to warm up and have some coffee. As anyone with Norwegian ancestry knows, coffee time was mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It wasn’t just a cup of coffee; it also included sandwiches, homemade cookies or cake, and sometimes even pie. I suspect Arvid timed it so he’d be plowing our road around coffee time. He knew my mother was a great cook and baker. If I had been operating a snowplow I’d have done the same.

The folks appreciated getting our road, driveway, and farmyard opened again so the mail could get to us and the milk hauler could pick up the milk and get it to the creamery. It also made it easier for us to get to school, which didn’t have the same degree of appreciation among us kids as it did our parents. Because Arvid was so good about giving us access to the outside world again, the least they could do was offer him some food and a chance to sit near the stove and warm up.

Arvid was a big man, built a lot like my father. I was in awe of him being able to operate that big snowplow. In the summertime he operated the road grader to smooth out our gravel road. I should mention, when I was young our road and most side roads were dirt or gravel, didn’t have names, and farms didn’t have fire numbers to designate their address. It wasn’t until later that names were assigned to all country roads and ours became Sherpe Road.

It makes you wonder how strangers ever found where someone lived. In our case we told people we lived on the side road west of Highway 14, located halfway between Tri-State Breeders and Smith School. Because we weren’t that far off the highway we weren’t very hard to find, except after a big snowstorm when huge drifts blocked our road. If a person came after coffee time, they had a much better chance of finding the road open after Arvid and his snowplow had arrived to dig us out.

David Sherpe and big drifts on Sherpe Road - 1959.

We also loved those big snow banks he left alongside the road. They were great to dig tunnels and snow caves in. Those big banks weren’t so great when the wind blew, which it did on a regular basis, and still does today, along Sherpe Road. Then the road filled back in and we were snowbound again until Arvid arrived to rescue us. The problem was, the bigger the snow banks became, the harder it was to keep them open because of the blowing and drifting snow. 

Winters were tough for farmers who lived on country roads, far from a main highway. When roads were drifted shut they had to wait until the snowplow arrived. If roads were blocked for several days, they ran out of cans and containers to put the milk in. If they lived close enough to a road that had been opened, they hauled the cans on sleds over the frozen fields. Tractors were useless because they could get through heavy drifts either. 

Several times Dad had to put the milk cans on a stone boat and physically pull it from the barn to the highway about a quarter mile away, where the milk hauler could pick up the cans. It was fairly easy going where the snow was drifted solid and he could walk on the top, but it was tough “sledding” where he kept breaking through the deep snow. Despite the hardships, farmers did whatever it required to get the milk to the creamery so they didn’t have to start dumping it in the snow. Dumping milk was a last resort because that was throwing hard-earned money away, although our many cats and dog loved it.

The huge March snowstorm in 1959 saw a lot of milk dumped when many farms were snowed in for a week. There was nothing else they could do. Everyone who remembers that storm has stories to tell. We spent several days at our grandparents who lived across from Smith School when we couldn’t get home because of the blizzard. It was a blizzard for the ages that people still talk about. 

Blizzards, snowdrifts, blocked roads, and cold weather are all a part of our life in the Midwest. As one friend told me, “Winter’s not for sissies.” How true that is.

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Make Love, Not War

Across the Fence #482

As I was searching through old notes and writings, looking for ideas for a Valentine’s Day column, I came across two items that seemed to go together. It was as if there was a story that I needed to tell.

In past columns that have dealt with Valentine’s Day, I’ve written about experiences at our one-room country school and how hard it was to decipher those messages on Valentines Day cards that came from girls at school. I also told about those little heart-shaped candies that had words on them. I think we’re all familiar with those hearts. All those stories were warm and fuzzy with a little puppy love thrown in. It was an innocent time as we were all trying to find our way in this world and how to relate to the opposite sex. For me, that was back during the 1950s.

Then came the early 60s, the beginning of a very turbulent time in our history. It was an interesting time, to say the least! It was filled with freedom marches, rioting in the streets, assassinations, the Vietnam War, and anti-war protests. It was a very violent time. Out of the American counterculture of the 1960s came the slogan “Make love, not war.” Those words were associated with, and used primarily by, those who opposed the Vietnam War. Since that time, we haven’t seen the kind of anti-war sentiment and protests that were so widespread during the 1960s. There was a lot of hate instead of love being shown.

Valentine’s Day should be a time of telling and showing people that we love them and that they are important in our lives. The older I get, the more that anti-war slogan, that I once hated and felt was directed at me, has become near and dear to my heart. I came across it again as I was looking for ideas and then remembered a journal entry I made in 1967 during the Vietnam War. Following is that journal entry, along with comments I made a year later.

“Today I ran into Doc Lebitz, one of the guys I went through basic and medic training with. He’s with the 3rd/8th, 4th Infantry, same unit as Cousin Bob. He said they’d spent a lot of the time in the boonies since they got here. They’ve been operating farther south and just arrived here in the Central Highlands about a month ago. It was nice seeing him and catching up on how everyone else was doing. We were all such a close bunch when we went through medic training together. We’re hoping we can go out on some operations together.

“Doc (Steve) and I share a love of writing. He’s been writing some short stories and poetry and read some of the things he’s written to me. They were really good. One of the poems he read was “Let’s Make Love Instead of War ” that he wrote around Valentine’s Day for his wife. He wants to become a writer when he gets out of here. Said he thought he’d write the great American war novel about this stinkin’ war. I told him to make sure he makes me into a hero in his book. In his usual humorous way he looked at me and said with a smile on his face, ‘Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be a book of fiction!’ I don’t doubt for a minute that he’ll write about this place when we get out of here. He wrote some great stories about our medic training back at Fort Sam that had us all rolling on the floor laughing. It was great seeing Steve again. He’s become a good friend.”

4th Infantry medics at LA Airport after we graduated from advanced medical training. Doc Lebitz in center with glasses. 

A year later I wrote: “Doc Lebitz never got a chance to write that great American novel about the war. He was Killed in Action. The world is poorer for his loss and we’ll never know what great writing he may have done if he had lived. Those of us who were his friends suffered a great loss when he died. When I think of him I think of all the lost potential because of war. How many aspiring authors never authored a book? Who among the casualties may have become a great doctor or scientist and perhaps would have discovered the key to curing a disease? How many future teachers were lost and will never be able to help and influence a child? These are the thoughts I have every time I think back to that day as we sat in the aid station and I listened to him read his writings, and him telling me with excitement in his voice and fire in his eyes, how he wanted to become a writer. I feel like we were all cheated because he didn’t get a chance to write that great “American” novel. We’ll never have the opportunity to read his words.”

I can never hear those words, “Make love, not war,” without thinking of him and what a tragedy and waste his death was. I think of all my stories that would never have been written if I had been killed instead of him. On this Valentine’s Day lets remember to love one another and put hate, prejudice, and war aside. Let’s make love, not war.

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The Winter of My Discontent

Across the Fence #481

I hope by the time you read this, we’re all enjoying warmer temperatures, less snow, and less wind. As I sit here writing, I can hear the wind roaring outside. When I went out to feed the birds late this afternoon, it was approaching whiteout conditions around our place. This area is known as Coon Prairie, but there isn’t a coon in sight. I think they all hitched rides and headed south knowing it was going to be a mighty cold winter.

I think most people have had enough of this winter and wish they’d followed the coons and gone south. It’s been a long time since we’ve had so many bitterly cold, below zero days. I’ll even use a line from Shakespeare, “Now is the winter of our discontent.” Spring can’t come fast enough. 

Even the grove of trees west of the house hasn’t afforded any protection this year. The wind comes swirling around the trees and keeps dumping more snow in our driveway. It’s been packed so hard its like cement. I could walk on top of the drifts yesterday and even my heavy-duty snowblower couldn’t budge it. I had to break up the snow with a shovel so the snowblower could handle it. From the sound of the wind, tomorrow morning will be more of the same. Our driveway is already drifted shut again. I’ve written before about how drifted Sherpe Road gets, especially back where we live. The road is most likely impassable now until a plow goes through. But, I’ll still need to get to work in the morning.

Drifts on Sherpe Road

Right now as I sit here in the winter of my discontent, I take back all the nice things I said about winter a few weeks ago. I’ve heard more than one person say, “Why the H are we living here instead of down south?” I’ve spent so much time snowblowing, shoveling, and breaking up the cement-like snow that by the time I’m finished, I’m too tired to go snowshoeing. I’m finding I’m not the spring chicken I still think I am. I should mention that the temperature is usually 12-15 below zero while I’m out there chipping away at the snow for an hour and a half, and the wind chill must be 35 or more below. 

Even with all my complaining, I’ve got it good compared to those who work outside in this weather. They deal with frozen water pipes, tractors and heavy equipment that won’t start, providing water and feed for cattle that are outside, plowing snow, delivering mail, helping when there’s an accident, fighting fires, constructing buildings, repairing cable and electrical lines, and the list goes on and on. I’m lucky, I have an inside job where it’s warm. My hat is off to all of you who work outside in this weather.  

Quoting the Bard again, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.” Shakespeare is telling us that while nature may be difficult and harsh at times, it’s never evil or deliberately cruel, like man often is.

Those of us who live here in the upper Midwest know that winter is one of our seasons. We also know that it can be difficult and harsh living here at times. But we put up with the difficult times because there are so many glorious times. The rest of Shakespeare’s line is “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer…” That’s what I try to remember when the wind is howling, the snow is blowing, and the temperature is plunging. Brighter, warmer, glorious days are coming. Even all that snow that’s piled in our driveway will be only a memory, as it gives way to green grass and flowers. Next time the temperature rises into the 90’s and the humidity is the same, and you start complaining about the heat, think back to this winter when you were freezing your buns off and the wind chill was 40 below zero. Maybe that hot weather isn’t so bad after all.

That subject came up a week ago as we were standing in foot deep snow, with the temperature at seven below, at the Coon Prairie Cemetery, waiting for Lincoln Stafslien’s funeral procession to arrive. I was part of the military honor guard and firing squad salute. It was cold and windy. Several of us were Vietnam veterans. We were talking among ourselves as we waited and said that we were glad we had served in the heat and humidity of Vietnam instead of the freezing cold and snow of Korea, or the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. 

Even though my fingers were so cold they hurt, I was glad to be there for Lincoln. I owed him this final sendoff, even if we were freezing. When I returned from Vietnam on July 4, 1967, I wouldn’t arrive in Minneapolis in time to get a connecting flight to La Crosse until the next morning. My mother said someone would drive to Minneapolis to get me. They called Lincoln and he gave up a family holiday to drive my father, my sister Janet, and brother Arden to Minneapolis to meet me. I will always be grateful. This may be the winter of our discontent, but I had a warm feeling as we saluted our friend Lincoln one last time.

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Jumping and Friday Night Lights

Across the Fence #480

It’s that time of year when the snow keeps falling, the temperature keeps plunging, the wind keeps dumping huge drifts in our driveway, and the skis start flying. It’s time for Friday night lights. No, not Friday night football lights, but Friday night ski jumping lights.

Five years ago the Westby Snowflake Ski Club decided to try ski jumping at night–on Friday night. It was a big success and this will be the fifth year of watching skiers fly off into the darkness of the night on the 118-meter Olympic-sized jumping hill. It certainly adds a whole new flavor to ski jumping. This year the Friday night lights tournament is, January 31. Saturday’s jumping is during daylight hours.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to push off and start down the inrun of the scaffold, picking up speed, while everything around you is dark except for the lights illuminating the scaffold and landing hill. It must be an exciting, surreal experience for the jumpers.

We attended many jumping tournaments when I was young. It was always an exciting time and I remember many of those famous ski jumpers from my youth. Billy Olson, Art Devlin, Willie Erickson, John Balfanz, Gene, Kotlarek, Dave Norby, and Westby’s own, Lyle Swenson. I bet not many people can name any of today’s ski jumpers. That’s too bad, because those old ski jumpers were heroes to us.

I remember seeing Lyle Swenson set the track as the first jumper off the new 90-meter hill after it was built. I remember when John Balfanz set the new North American record of 317 feet. I hope future generations can have similar memories about watching today’s jumpers in the original extreme sport of ski jumping. Of course, we always liked to see a few spectacular crashes too. I guess that’s human nature. It seems like there are very few falls these days. Either the jumpers have become more skilled or the less skilled are no longer in the sport.

Remember that poor ski jumper that fell on the scaffold, and went bouncing off the jump each week on “The Wide World of Sports” as they announced “and the agony of defeat.” He probably had a thousand good jumps, but that one disaster is what we saw and now remember. His falling focused attention on him and made him famous. That’s too bad. 

Ski jumping is an extreme sport and we should be celebrating that guy’s courage to do what the majority of people would never attempt. These days, it’s hard to find anyone who ski jumps or has tried it in the past. When I was young, many of the guys around the Westby area jumped. Now there are so many organized sporting activities for kids, their time is limited, and very few try ski jumping. I was never very good at it, but we had a lot of fun and thrills. I was pretty good at falling too. I did a couple of spectacular face plants when I jumped too late that you’d have found exciting to watch. I still have my old jumping skis and boots, but don’t ask me to put them on and try it again. I’m not that dumb.

I should also make it very clear that I never attempted to jump on the big hills in Timber Coulee. Most of our jumping was on makeshift jumps that we made on the hills around our area. One of our best jumps was on a steep hill near Esofea. Unfortunately there was a stream running through the valley and we needed to get stopped before reaching the water. Rocks and trees were also a hazard. You’re probably starting to understand that my friends and I were in the amateur class when it came to jumping. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time perfecting what little skills we had, but we certainly had fun, and no one got seriously hurt, unless you count getting knocked out and seeing stars.

My brother, David, hits the takeoff on Severson Hill

We finally got the thrill of going off a real ski jump when we went up to the old Severson hill in Westby when no one else was around. If anyone had known we didn’t have any training on a real jumping hill, they would probably have chased us off. Some Westby area people may remember where that hill was. It was where the junior jumpers skied and had their tournaments. I don’t recall how far you could jump on that hill but think it was around 60 – 80 feet. Maybe it was more. I know it was plenty big for me. 

I don’t think any of us would have received many style points. We were just happy to get to the bottom of the hill without killing ourselves. One thing I can tell you, ski jumping is quite a rush, even for those of us who did it to have some fun and also see if we had the guts to drop our skis into the tracks and let them start down the inrun. There was no putting them in reverse. Once you committed yourself, the wild ride was on. At least I never went bouncing off the takeoff like that poor TV jumper.

There’s nothing quite like flying through the air. I wonder what it would feel like under Friday night lights?

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The Yin and Yang of Life

Across the Fence #479

In a recent story, I used the term “yin-yang.” Some people have asked me what that meant. They weren’t familiar with the term. I wasn’t either until I got involved in the martial arts many years ago. Let me try to explain. The yin-yang philosophy is represented by the Tao symbol that attempts to explain the workings of everything in the universe. It originated in ancient China and stands for the two opposing forces that govern the world. 

There are times when my mind wanders in many different directions, seeking answers to why things are the way they are. I always seem to come back to the realization that life is a circle and we, and everything in it, are part of that circle of life. The Tao is a circle with two opposing forces that flow together.

The Native Americans and the people of the Orient are very aware of, and tuned into, the circle of life. I think too many people in the Western world tend to see life as straight lines, with occasional deviations from the path, but all roads go from point A to point B. 

Even in politics we get hung up with lines. “Middle of the road” is moderate, “Left” is liberal, and “Right” is conservative. We think of them as straight lines with no deviation from the path. No crossing the line to the views of “the other side.” “Keep on the straight and narrow path,” we are told. 

Party lines. I’ve often said if one party put a pig on the ballot, many people would vote for the pig, just because the pig is running on the right ticket. Who cares about the views or lack of views of the pig as long as he’s running in “Our Party?” It’s straight-line thinking instead of circle thinking that creates conflict and the lack of compromise.

Which brings my wandering mind back to the yin-yang symbol. 

The interaction of two opposing forces is referred to as “yin” and “yang” in the Orient, “negative” and “positive” in the Western world.

The symbol is representative of two opposing forces flowing into one another in a continuous state of change. Yin is passive or negative. Yang is active or positive. They are opposite yet complementary. There is black and white flowing into each other and in a process of constant change. Also, nothing is completely black or white. In the black there is a spot of white, and in the white, a spot of black.

There is light and dark, love and hate, happy and unhappy, up or down, smile or frown, male and female, optimist or pessimist, day and night, right and wrong, weak and strong, and the list goes on and on. I think you can see the many opposites in your life.

In the martial arts we taught people how to use an attacker’s strength and force against themselves. By applying the principles of the Tao, or circle, the weak can overcome the strong. But it didn’t just represent self-defense. It became a philosophy of life. At the urging of a friend who counseled veterans, I founded a Karate club in Madison, called Nam Ki Do, for veterans who were having problems. I enlisted the help of my friend, Wes Severson, who was also a black belt in Tai Kwon Do and a veteran, to help instruct. The instruction was free of charge, but the students were expected to take the instruction seriously and not use what they learned in an aggressive way. Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate said, “The ultimate aim of the art of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.” He also said “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.” Those are the attitudes we wanted to instill in our students. Using the principles of yin-yang we taught them how to control their anger and how to take the negative experience of war and turn it into something positive. Some of our students had drug and alcohol problems and many of them got their lives back together after getting involved in Nam Ki Do and learning the yin-yang of life. Several stuck with us long enough to earn their black belts and a couple have gone on to teach self-defense classes to women, also at no charge. When we left Madison, Wes took over and Nam Ki Do is still being taught after 24 years. And so the circle represented by the Tao continues to evolve. The negatives have morphed into positives.    

Yin-yang is representative of life. Which side we choose, which direction we go, depends on our personal outlook. If you want to live a happy, vigorous, healthy life, look to the bright side. If gloom, misery, and self-defeating attitudes attract you, look to the dark side. The path lies before each of us and we have the power to choose the way we wish to go. 

Just remember, even if you find yourself on the dark side of life, look for the bright spot, no matter how small. Then follow that light and use those negative experiences to make you stronger and turn the negatives into positives by changing the yin into yang. The choice is ours to make! 

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Cold Weather and Clotheslines

Across the Fence #478

I don’t have to tell anyone that it’s been really cold lately. It’s been the main topic of conversation, once our lips thaw out enough to talk. This will be a winter that will give people bragging rights for many years to come. “It got down to 24 below at our house on the ridge.” That’s nothing. It was 28 below at our place in the valley.” “You think that’s cold? It was 30 below at our house… and that was the inside temperature!” It was so cold at our place we had to thaw out our words in a frying pan to see what we were saying.” And the bragging goes on and on. It’s been that kind of winter.    

So how cold was it? It was so cold that people who hung their clothes on the line to dry needed three days for the clothes to thaw out after they brought them into the house. I realize many people don’t know anything about clotheslines and hanging clothes out to dry on them. I don’t pretend to be an expert either, but at least I know what a clothesline is used for.

We always had an outdoor clothesline when I was young. Every week Ma would wash clothes in a wringer washing machine and then hang them out to dry. She did this all year ‘round, regardless of the weather. Sometimes she had us kids take the clothes off the line and bring them in the house where she would iron the clothes that needed ironing and fold them. Now I suspect many people don’t even own an iron and ironing board.

I remember how fresh the clothes smelled after hanging on the line. I also remember frozen clothes piled on the kitchen table thawing out. Some of those blue jeans and bib overalls were so stiff I think we could have pounded nails with them. 

When it comes to clotheslines, people have a lot of memories and they are usually positive.

Around 1935 on the Sherpe farm at Old Towne. 

L-R: Agnes Steenberg, Marjorie (Steenberg) Haugen, 

Alice (Sherpe) Sherman behind my grandmother, Inga Sherpe, 

with clothes under her arm from the clothesline behind her.

A good friend from Madison told me, “How well I remember how Mother would put the clothes out in the winter, bare-handed, of course, and the clothes would freeze. (This was NORTHERN Minnesota, mind you) By the time she finished hanging out the clothes she would take them in again and put them on the dining room table at night. By morning they would be the dampness needed to iron them. It wasn’t easy. For some reason or other, she didn’t seem to want us kids to help. Most likely we couldn’t do it right.”

Another person said, “We had metal poles at each end (of the line). It was so sturdy that Dad put a swing on one of them, so one of my memories of clotheslines is swinging while mom hung out the clothes! I can still feel what that was like - the sun shining, big white fluffy clouds, wind in my face, and mom and I singing and talking.” 

My classmate, Ardy, often commented on my columns or sent ideas for new ones. I miss her e-mails. She’s hanging clothes on that big clothesline in the sky now. She once wrote, “Your description of your dad and neighbor stopping to talk reminded me of years ago when I had tons of laundry to do and took the time to hang it on the clothesline. I was never sure if it was the freshness of the clothes when they dried, or the visiting with the neighborhood gals, who were also hanging out laundry, that made it appealing. It was another version of talking “across the fence.”

Last summer, my cousin Sue Ostrem wrote, “I just took clothes off the line at our family farm, like Mom used to do. I have one of her jackets and in one of the pockets was a clothes pin. I can just see her probably heading to town and looking back over her shoulder at the clothesline and there was a pin... and maybe rain coming... so not to leave the little clothes pin on the line to get wet, she must have put it in her pocket, thinking she would take it out when she got home, never thinking that years in the future I would find it and treasure it. Yes, I still have the clothes pin in the pocket. And there it shall stay.”

Speaking of clothes pins, there were different types that I remember, all made out of wood. Just as Sue mentioned, you didn’t leave clothes pins on the line. You always gathered the pins when taking down dry clothes! Pins left on the lines could get dirty and the springs could rust. The efficient way to hang clothes was to line the clothes up so you didn’t need two clothes pins per item. You shared one between two items. That way you didn’t need to buy as many and saved money. 

Another thing, you always hung the sheets and towels on the outside lines so you could hide your underwear on the middle lines where people couldn’t see them. You can tell a lot about a family by driving by and seeing what’s hanging on their line, including how large the family is, the approximate ages of the kids, what kind of clothes they wear, and if there’s nothing on the line on a Monday, they probably headed south to get out of this deep freeze!

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