One thing we Baby boomers remember as kids is that everyone had a clothesline and always had clothes out drying when the weather was fit. You rarely, if ever, see this these days. There’s nothing like the smell of air and sun dried clothes!  I’m not sure why this practice has fallen into disuse these days. Maybe it’s just easier to just use the dryer since I’m not sure if you can set the sun for “Permanent Press”.  Of course you can hang clothes and set “Delicate Fabrics” on a calm day, or set “Cool” on a cool day. The only way I could see that you could, however, set “Permanent Press” would be to hang the wet clothes when it’s warm just before dusk, then after dark it would be on the “Cool” setting. The only drawback is that you’d have to get the dry clothes after dark. I don’t see this as any problem since you could add some “whitening” to them! Aha! There you have it, maybe when people realize this, they will start to hang their clothes on outside lines again! Hmmm, this remains to be seen, indeed! On my way back from the barn today, Tim was nearby and he and I started looking for a metal stub barely sticking out of the ground behind where the woodshed used to be. The stub was all that remains of the clothesline we used to have when we were kids. As you might know, even though Tim hits it with the lawnmower every spring, we couldn’t locate it just then. We then started to bloviate on all the neat things about the old clothesline. The ends, which held the lines, were welded, hollow, metal “T’s” which were painted white, (see sketch at bottom). One thing I really recall was that they weren’t sanded before they were painted and were rather rough! One of the things they were really good for was to make a “cannon” for cherry bombs. We found this out because every year there would be a wasp’s nest inside the horizontal bar on the east end. Since we couldn’t run a rod through the inside due to the through eye hook shanks to hold the 3 lines on, we would put a cherry bomb in the opposite end and light it. The explosion always resulted in blowing the whole wasp’s nest out the other end. During the times there were no wasp’s nests, it would make a great “cannon” affect with cherry bombs inside it. It would even “kick” a little and blow out a lot of smoke like a real cannon. Later on when I was in the Navy, I heard REAL 5” deck guns being shot. WOW! Talk about LOUD!!! (To see a pic of me sitting under one aboard the USS Tattnall (DDG-19) click here). At least I had a little experience with our various “cannons”.  If you missed it, check out the “Big Shot” story. The clothesline “T” posts also served as the proving ground where I first learned to “shimmy up” a pipe. When I was really young, I saw the “big” kids shimmy up one of the legs of the old swing sets we used to have at the school playground. That was REALLY high up for me. After practicing on the clothesline posts, I finally got nerve enough when I was a little older (around 28 I think) and tackled it and finally made it to the very top! Another valuable resource of the clothesline was the “prop posts” that prevented the line from sagging from too much wet laundry. I used one of these all through my kid years for various things such as: a pole vault, a musket, a rifle, a spear, a bee’s nest “knocker downer”, and heaven only knows what… The clothespins made great targets for BB guns and later .22 rifles. If you have been a “charter story fan” and/or have read all the 150 some odd stories by now, you would have to be wondering, “Wasn’t ANYTHING sacred when you guys were kids”??? Well, just to make it definitive once and for all, the answer is “NO”. I shall now close this true account (as they ALL are) with this question that’s also SURE to be on each reader’s mind. “Since you didn’t mention that Tim and you repeatedly knocked down the clean laundry from the line during our “Clothesline Capers”, does that mean you never did???? I shall answer this with another question, “What do you think?? Heh heh… As I repeatedly mention to Tim about our parents, grandparents, uncles, etc. “…And we wonder why they drank so much”!!!!