Unusual Monday Morning Blues | News, Sports, Vacancies

Last Monday morning was particularly blue – but not for the usual gloomy reasons.

My routine trip to Erie for a doctor’s appointment was particularly enlightening… and exciting.

It was ten in the morning when I drove towards Sugar Grove, where many Amish families live. On the way into town I passed three separate Amish buggies heading towards Warren. One of the young men waved and I returned his friendly gesture.

When heading northwest from Sugar Grove on Highway 86, I always pass about a dozen Amish farms. It’s for this reason that I prefer Wellman Road to the parallel route about a mile away. I love the farmhouses, barns and many outbuildings that adorn the rolling hillsides.

But wait! What is this? It was a huge line of blue and white underwear. Certainly! It was Monday. It was just the first yard of about a dozen houses with long rows of blue shirts, trousers and skirts lying in front. Each Amish home could be identified by its stacked clotheslines.

I slowed down to admire the work, the neatness and careful arrangement of the linen. Although I seriously considered stopping and taking a few photos with my phone, I remembered that the Amish prefer not to have their photos taken. If someone in the household went outside, I didn’t want to be near their yard and click away. So, with no traffic behind me, I slowed down to 5 mph and enjoyed the exquisite geometry of their clotheslines.

All the blue clothes were hung by size, from the smallest child to the dad. Little shirts for babies, shirts for little boys, shirts for bigger boys, and then Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Next were dad size pants hanging down, down, down, with a few overalls on the small end. Blue skirts and tops were also hung by size, followed by a large batch of white aprons. In one home, white aprons merged into a long line of sheets and pillowcases.

I sat and thought about not only how to wash all these clothes by hand, but also how to take the time to sort them by size while they were hanging. At the next house, two full clotheslines stretched high, high into a pair of trees. The pulley system sent the smallest sizes up above the cleared branches and it brought back old memories for me.

Back in the dark ages, before the advent of modern dryers, the clothesline in our apartment ran from the second-floor hall window to the pear tree across the yard. I vividly remember carrying a heavy basket of wet laundry, sometimes dragging it across the hallway from the kitchen to the window. To make it easier for me, my mom sorted our clothes by type as they went through the last wringer and into the laundry basket.

Standing on the stool, I lowered the top window, hanging our clothes on the pulley, starting with our underwear. Bras and panties were small and light, best worn at the furthest distances. Mom advised: “You know, it will be neater if you hang all your panties together, and then all mine.” I never questioned why. Next were my jerseys. Homemade, almost forgotten memories.

On Monday, I smiled as I looked high up in the tree at the Amish woman’s pulley rope. A small white robe fluttered at the top, gradually descending into a long blue line. And all this, the heavily loaded cable had to be pulled and yanked into place. I could almost feel it in my hands.

By the time I hit the highway, my thoughts were consumed by the workday of Amish women, the physical aspects of running a home with many children and many bellies requiring three meals a day. In addition, after every Saturday there were laundry Mondays.

Six hours later, as I was returning, everything had changed. Dry laundry was taken away from half the houses. Some had more lines filled in, and one took a family’s clothes and replaced them with sheets, sheets, sheets, and more white socks than I’ve ever seen in one place.

As I headed up the last hill, small groups of Amish children were walking home from school, hugging the side of the road. A group of five little boys wearing blue straw hats jumped, swayed and skipped together, laughing. And they waved. Three girls in caps, almost teenagers, walked sedately, absorbed in chatter. A hundred feet further on, four little girls were walking home, giggling.

That’s when I realized that hoods need to be dried inside. I didn’t see one on the clothesline that morning.

Always full of respect for our gentle blue-clad neighbors, I particularly enjoyed a day spent driving back and forth through their Busti neighborhood. It’s hard to think about the long blue lines on laundry day without smiling in admiration.

I definitely need to schedule more doctor visits on Mondays.

Marcy O’Brien writes from Warren, Pennsylvania.