Closepin memories

 The sheets are drying on a backyard clothesline. A gentle breeze and golden sunlight, a mixture of clean and fresh late into the day. Tomorrow, the colored clothes will take the place of linens, trying harder to catch the breeze, and some will need extra clothespins. The bag they are kept in is just a simple bag Mom put together from old sewing materials and hangs on the line for easy access. There were two different kinds of clothespins, the basic wooden ones and the ones with a spring that, as a kid, would pinch your fingers sometimes by accident as you handed one to mom, and other times when nobody was around, and you tried to be a brave little soldier and pinch one on your nose.

On windy days, you'd run through the clothes, smelling the freshness as mom watched from the kitchen window, remembering doing the same thing as a young girl. It's funny how we recall childhood memories that are somehow passed down from one generation to another with little change. Your great-grandmother used wooden clothespins that her husband made by carving sturdy sticks into equal lengths, then slicing them down the middle so they fit snugly on the line.

Your grandma used those until seeing a bag of clothespins in the hardware store, all pre-cut and sanded, ready to use. It even had a handle on top to hang on the line, ready when needed. Your mom used store-bought ones like her mom, but one day, while window shopping, she saw the latest in clothespin design, made of plastic and available in a multitude of colors. Truly a great invention, not just for hanging clothes but also for toy soldiers: some in colorful uniforms and others in no color at all, engaged in battle until mom needed one or two, and we had to choose which fallen soldier would give its life.

My generation doesn't hang clothes outside when they have a gas or electric dryer to do the job, unlike most people. But call me old school because my wife and I still hang clothes to dry in the fresh air and golden sunlight. Our kids make toys from clothespins, mostly wooden, by the way, with a bag of colored ones, so they can play soldiers just as I did. I would imagine that my kids' kids will be left wondering just what in the world those odd-looking wooden and plastic things they found in a box in the garage were used for. I'll search my memory bank and tell them we used wooden pins to attach baseball cards to the spokes of our bikes so we'd sound like a bunch of wannabe bikers. Good times, good times. I'll let their mom and grandma tell them the other side of the coin in their stories.

Mike  2026