@ossobuco,
Imagine 20 clotheslines holding 40 sheets, 20 towels plus all the clothes little people and boys wear. That's what was flapping in the warm sun, hot sun, cold weather, any weather, in the children's home five days a week. Would have made a fascinating photo.
All the girls 13 and older took turns "hanging out." It was a ligitimate excuse from school when it was your turn for this chore. The lady, Miss Cox, who ran this laundry establishment was about 80, a real harridan (they just pretend to be so's we'd behave), did all the washing and piled those wet clothes in big baskets for us young girls to take out and drape across the lines with clothes pins. It was fun, though, chasing each other among the flapping sheets, screaming and laughing.
Later on, when I lived with my dad and stepmother, they would both leave for work, leaving me with all the ironing (all sprinkled and rolled up) and washing (sitting in baskets) to be hung on our two lines. It's amazing that I'd forget to get these chores done. Stepmom would have a fit, coming home tired and there they sat - those baskets of stiff, unironed clothes and wet ones all dried but still laying in the baskets. Teenagers are awful.
Married, living in our own house wherever we lived - Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan - I still hung the clothes outside to dry, early on all the diapers. It was just fun and they smelled so nice, plus the hanging-over-the-fence-gabbing with neighbors. We didn't always have a drier, though.
I don't think anyone would say anything here, should one of us hang clothes out to try. They might get a little dusty, even dirty with all that TX dirt flying 'round.
