Back in the days before Montrealers won constitutionally-guaranteed access to a dryer and fabric-softening sheets, people hung their wash out their backyards. For some reason, everybody seemed to do the wash on the same day. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut called that day Blue Monday. It's not something you see much of anymore and further evidence we're drifting apart. Oscar Edros, a journalist who escaped communist Hungary after the '56 rebellion, took this shot somewhere in Montreal in the summer of 1957. He was obviously interested in the phenomenon of laundry flapping way down the alley -- something that wasn't known in his native land. So whatever happened to Edros? While there is a listing for a P. Edros on Ridgeview Street that year, it looks like he moved on to greener pastures. There's a file in his name at the Holocaust Centre of Northern California. Apparently, he was liberated from a Nazi death camp about 11 years before he got out from under the Iron Curtain.
Hmm. A coupla carefully launched ninja stars and you've got a complete wardrobe on the cheap. Try to do a post on panty snatchers. According to police records, my uncle Abner was arrested for that nine times.
ReplyDeleteEven up until the early 70's there were those who never bought new jeans. I don't think there is anyone on the planet who would insist that dryers can come even close to doing the job that the great old back balcony could do, but during winter, for example, they just became more convenient, even a status thing.
ReplyDeleteHanging out the washing isn't obsolete. Walk down any back alley in Verdun, Rosemont, Villeray, even parts of the Plateau, on a sunny day, and you'll get an eyeful.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to do a sort of informal study, count the proportion of homes that use them. It is, after all, one of those global warming issues and would be a worthy area of study. Maybe we could score a grant from Hydro to do this. I don't personally see that many clotheslines being used, even in Verdun.
ReplyDeleteI was in St-Michel a couple weeks ago and saw tons of clothes on the line. Don't see it as much in the inner boroughs but people definitely do it (I would if I didn't live in the middle of an industrial wasteland).
ReplyDeleteOn my block I see maybe four or five clotheslines on any given day. Most of my neighbours hang their clothes out to dry.
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