Here, readers share favorite tales. Read what your virtual neighbors have said on this page and click the numbers on the side for more letters. Also, we'd love to hear your story.

When I was child in the early 1950s, my mother had a dryer but it was always a treat going to my Aunt Onie's house. I have vivid memories of my days playing hide-and-seek and "ghosts" with my cousins. Even though we all knew who was behind the sheets going "Boo!" we were still terrified and shrieked with excitement. I remember spending the night at my aunt's and looking out the window to see the clothes and sheets dance in the wind. This conjured up visions of every imaginable type of scary creature and we stayed up half the night telling spooky stories to each other. What terrific tales we made up.
Janet
Franklin Hills, Michigan

My grandmother hung her sheets over two lines so that they would dry faster. The way she hung them, each sheet made a tent or a canopy. On hot summer days, I loved to play with my dolls in the grassy shade under those cool, damp, billowing sheets.
Rhonda
Salt Lake City, Utah

We moved to a small mountain town and bought a dryer when we moved. But my husband is one of the world's great procrastinators and it never got hooked up. So, I hung my laundry-indoors in the winter and out in the summer. Nine years later, the dryer is hooked up but I still hang the laundry. When I think of all my angry protests to my husband that I really needed the dryer hooked up...and, in the end, I discovered that I really like to hang the laundry out. At 10,143 feel above sea level, the clothes dry so very fast.
Addie
Leadville, Colorado

When I was growing up, we used clotheslines almost exclusively. I longed for a dryer since hanging the laundry seemed hopelessly out of date. Now I cherish the memories of doing laundry with my grand-mother when together, we would hang clothes on the line. She taught me the "right" way to hang and I still cringe when I see things hung willy-nilly. To this day, I prefer hanging clothes outside to using my dryer.

My gran, my great aunts, my mom, my sister and I can all be found on laundry day pinning our clothes to whatever lines we have access to. I use the retractable kind because clotheslines are discouraged in my subdivision. My hanging out the laundry causes my husband some consternation. He pleads with me to use our dryer, saying that my laundry ritual makes him feel "poor." I chuckle at this and tell him, "Dear, we could be millionaires and I would still hang out our clothes."
Deann
Fort Collins, Colorado

My mother was cleaning out her basement and sent me a box full of my old doll clothes. They smelled pretty musty so I washed them. I wanted to air them outside and don't have a clothesline so I hung them all around the sun umbrella over the table in the back yard. They looked so cute and I thought what a nice idea for a little girls tea party.
Orla
Woodside, New York

Hanging the clothes out on the line was my job when I was small. It was a challenge to get the sheets stretched without dropping them. There was absolutely nothing more delicious than taking the clothespins off and folding the stiff, sweet-smelling sheets. When I was older, I got to iron the sheets on the mangle out on our screened side porch. While I ironed, I listened to Our Gal Sunday and Stella Dallas. They were radio soap operas.
Carolyn
Mandeville, Louisiana

I was so busy as a young wife with five children that the only time I could hang the clothes out on the line was at night. I still remember how luminous the white sheets looked out in the moonlight.
Ardath
Emmaus, Pennsylvania

When I was a child, I loved running through the laundry drying out on the line in the back yard. Sometimes we would hide in between the sheets or use that space as a fort. I was so disappointed when my mother bought a dryer.
Margaret
Denver, Colorado

Many years ago, I had a favorite sweater that I bought (with my own allowance money) at Marshall Field's in Chicago. I think I wore it every single day. After a while my mother persuaded me that the sweater should be washed. So she carefully washed it and hung it out on the line to dry. A short time later, I could hear my sister shrieking from the back yard. For some unknown reason, our cat had jumped up and grabbed at the sweater. When he jumped down, his claw was still caught. So...in getting loose and making his get-away, he succeeded in unraveling more than half of the front of the sweater. I don't know how my mother managed to re-knit that sweater-or maybe she just sent away for one just like it. I never could get a straight answer. Whenever I asked, my mother just smiled.
John
Des Moines, Iowa

My husband and I went on a wonderful European trip in the 1990s. We packed very lightly -- one backpack each. I often washed our clothes in a tiny sink in a shared bathroom and hung them out on chairs in our room -- or on whatever was available. Our hotel in Rome was a charming place and our room overlooked an enclosed courtyard. I was thrilled because I saw a clothes-line right outside our window. Quickly, I washed our clothes and hung them over the line (I had neglected to bring clothespins). A few minutes later, I heard "squeek, squeek, squeek." It didn't dawn on me immediately what the sound was... then, I realized that the clothesline was moving and taking our clothes with it. What to do? I leaned out the window, prepared to yell something like, "Stop, thief!" What I saw surprised me: several windows away, a woman was carefully putting clothespins on our laundry. After pinning them all, she waved to me and sent them back. Laundry seems to be the universal language.
Glasgow
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My first clothesline memory is about my grandfather. From the 1950s to the 1980s, he owned a small village of cottages (on the bay in Cape Cod) that he rented out in the summers. They were cute, red-roofed, whitewashed buildings surrounded by a white picket fence. My grandfather washed all the sheets for the cottages in a wringer washer and hung them out on a long clothesline near the beach. I worked there the summer before I started college (a long time ago!) and I still have the picture in my head of those sparkling sheets blowing in the breeze with the bay as a backdrop. After they were dry, he ironed them all. Every guest commented on the wonderful smell, feel and look of those sheets.
Nancy
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

One lovely spring day when I was a young girl, my mother and I hung the sheets out on the line in the sunshine. The wind kicked up a little in the afternoon and blew apple blossom petals from the nearby apple tree all over the sheets. We brushed the petals off as we took the sheets off the line but my bedsheets were softly scented like sunshine and apple blossoms all week. It was heavenly.
Eliza
Greenwood Village, Colorado

My mother had the longest clothesline in the world. It ran from her apartment on 106th Street and 2nd Avenue to an apartment building across the way. There was a little bell on each side so, when my mother's laundry was dry and she rang the bell, the woman on the other side would know the line was free. Once a year or so, the line would break and everything would plunge down onto a bocci court three stories below. I would have to walk through Longumbati's Pastry Shop and interrupt the men playing bocci to pick up my mother's laundry.
Mario
New York, New York

I grew up on a ranch so there were lots of blue jeans to be washed. When they were put out on the line in the winter, they would freeze solid. We would bring them in and just stand them upright in the kitchen. Then the kids would watch as the blue jeans got warm and collapsed.
Cam
El Rito, New Mexico.

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