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November 10, 2007
A New "Twist" On The Clothesline
I have been reading up on the clothesline issue, just because I have an insatiable curiosity and determination to learn more on just about every subject pertaining to my area of the law, and have been asking people what they think about whether the sight of clotheslines are bothersome (or maybe more appropriately, what hangs on them). I was in Iowa recently visiting my mother, and I asked her this question. Always surprisingly up on matters relating to property (she was a realtor and property manager for about 45 years of her life), she said that Iowa City (a thriving metropolis and melting pot in the middle of the country where I was born) passed an ordinance declaring that clotheslines were an "attractive nuisance". This essentially means that if you leave a clothesline up in your yard and a running (tall) child or burglar hangs themselves up on it, you are guilty of a "tort" (no, that's not "tart" or "torte" )- in terms of the legal world, a tort is sort of like a crime but in the civil context, meaning you may have to pay for the commiting the deed - possibly pay dearly. You probably won't have to go to jail, but you may lose your life savings.
Now this surprised me, because I got my love of wind and sun dried sheets and towels and my mindset of equating laundry on the line with something good, having been raised in the midwest, where neighbors seldom complained about anything their neighbors do (yes, I mean just about anything). The openness of the backyards and friendliness of the neighbors talking across - well, there aren't even very many fences, was always appealing. And undaunted, many Iowa Citians have simply gone to a cement hole in the ground, covered in plastic for easy riding mower capability, with a portable "parasol" type of clothesline that goes up only when used for drying the day's laundry.
So, even in Iowa, the permanent backyard clotheslines has a somewhat negative connotation, at least in Iowa City, where the temporary student population "visiting" the University of Iowa for 3 or 4 years just voted down, much to the chagrin of my mother's generation, raising the drinking age to 21 (it's 19) and the college is grappling with a scary thing called "thirsty Thursdays" where students pile up their classes Monday through Thursday so they can have an easy Friday and extra night of drinking on the weekends. Hey, maybe the ordinance was passed to save the drunken college students who might be taking a shortcut back to the dorm. Who knows? All I know is that clotheslines are a delicate subject, maybe even more delicate than what one sees hanging upon one. It isn't all about the tree huggers vs. the snooty property dwellers after all.
Posted by Beth Grimm at November 10, 2007 9:29 AM