A local column by Peg Elliott Mayo

The month of August has been extraordinarily frightening for me.

Weeks of azure sky, southern breezes, warm nights spangled with stars and a golden crescent moon — terrible.

There has been time for the tardy to get their wood in, roofs have been mended, sunburn experienced and blackberries begging to be eaten.

If the word gets out on this, we’ll have refugees from Tahiti moving in.

I write as president for life of the Coast Range Tourist Abatement Committee. My injunction: Tell no one. No one at all.

Rumors spread. Bend the truth so most of it is in shadow.

Mention how the migratory birds who breed here have left for Mexico. Suggest they are wise. Tell the curious that billions and billions of grotesquely slimy slugs lie in wait under the mosses.

Do what you must to keep Oregon’s soggy reputation alive. After all, 10 sodden months out of 12 isn’t bad.

Some will find me quirky. Not only do I like to read in the shade by the river, but I luxuriate in hanging the laundry on my super-strong, custom-made clothesline.

A well-hung clothesline is an art form as ephemeral as a chocolate soufflé or a freshly ironed white broadcloth shirt.

Like the soufflé, there are inviolable protocols, necessary attention to detail, and appreciation of both process and product.

The clothesline aesthetic is often a private pleasure, savored in soft spring sunlight and on drowsy August afternoons. There is exhilaration in racing thunderheads to gather in the bounty before the first drops fall.

Those lacking in sensitivity pooh-pooh the simple elegance of towels hung in white, blue, and green formation, every corner stretched taut, snapping like firecrackers in the crisp heat.

I have witnessed careless and cruel perversion of this innocent art: socks hung willy-nilly, heel or toe, unpaired, unkempt, forlorn, mixed in with tea towels, rags, and bath rugs.

It has been my sad observation that jeans are rarely hung properly with the fly open, but smoothed, pockets tucked in, inseams matched, finger creases made the length of the leg, and only the tiniest, most discreet fold to accommodate the pins securing them to the line.

I shudder at jeans thrown across a line at obscene angles and without regard to decorum.

Men’s underpants must be hung with the double layers of fabric facing into the hottest sun of the day, pin pinching the seat-crotch seam accurately.

Simple appreciation of form and function should dictate to every sentient being that like must hang with like.

It is a simple philosophy. Towels with towels, hand towels, and wash cloths in associated harmonious congeniality.

Is this so hard to understand?

For those railing of a perceived rigidity of thought, consider that panties in bright colors invite the thoughtful aesthetic of planning a flower bed. Is it better to have a mass of yellows together or sprinkle some daring pinks and blacks in as well?

Choice — within reason —that’s the ticket!

While a case may be made for plastic clothes pins — smooth, colorful, strong — the soul shrivels at their glitzy artifice.

A person who would prefer their flash to the homey, time-proven reliability of wood is the sort of person who also consumes with protest such food analogs as decaffeinated coffee and frozen French fries.

I do not mean to be condemning of the ignorant.

My suggestion is to simply study a clothesline pinned with wood and then one pegged in plastic.

Do you gravitate toward Leonardo’s rendition of the Mona Lisa or your aunt’s paint-by-numbers “creation”? ’Nuff said.

Fabrics dried in a dryer are characterized by lassitude, hot-cloth stench and weak character. Beauty once again sacrificed for convenience. America may be doomed to follow the dark spiral of so-called convenience to the fate of the Roman Empire, done in by lead pipes.

By contrast, few satisfactions exceed taking down a line of bone-dry, slightly crisp, fragrant clothes and linens.

Gratification grows with every fold, every addition to the heaping wicker basket. (Never use plastic laundry baskets. Like cell phones, they are spawn of the devil and will ruin the aesthetic of a day spent in otherwise meticulous attention to detail.)

Months later, opening a drawer filled with sun-and-wind dried pillowcases or handkerchiefs, the sweetness of clean air, warm sun, sharp breezes intoxicates. Love’s labor found.

Peg Elliott Mayo writes from the Coast Range. She invites comment at uncommonideas@rivervoices.com and readers to her blog: www.peak.org/~pegmayo/