I was driving thru South Paterson, NJ on a recent Saturday morning, and saw something that took me back almost 50 years. I.e., clothes hanging outside to dry! My goodness, someone out there is still using clothes lines and clothes pins!!! That’s the way it was in the neighborhood where I grew up. By the 1980s and 90s, most everyone in town bought their own washing machines and dryers, or used a laundromat. I thought that the fine art of outdoor drying was gone forever. But it looks like it still survives in places!
Well, this neighborhood in Paterson is dominated by recent immigrants with just-getting-by working class jobs. So maybe this is just a part of survival for these families. Well hey, I admire that, and I appreciate the opportunity, however brief, to revisit the way things were back when I was growing up!
