A little bit of this, a little bit of that - 3rd in a Series

Just when I thought it was safe to say I had never seen two shoes lost by the side of the road [as in last week's column], I saw a pair.

I was on a walk with my husband when he looked up and said, there they are. I said where, and he said up there.

Looking up, I saw two tennis shoes laced together, hanging from a power line. Hm-mm, the sight of those shoes struck me as a sardonically cute and nasty prank. Or, maybe they were a territorial gang sign used to mark boundaries as they do in big cities.

Further along on our walk that evening and nearing sunset, I spotted a rainbow of bed sheets with ends delicately lifting like sails in an autumn breeze. What an oddity in an apartment complex with coin-powered machines to wash and dry clothes.

I marveled at those sheets juxtaposed to our wi-fi world, where invisible networks, like the wind, download movies, television programs and other forms of entertainment directly to our living rooms with the click of a button.

To me, laundry hanging on the line is a picturesque display of both hope and economy. I love this so much that I took dozens of photos of laundry hanging from postage stamp verandas on countless high-rises in London, when I was there in May.

It was quite a paradoxical scene. London is the most global city in the world, where 300 languages are spoken. It's a place where some of the most sophisticated and complex business transaction take place every day, a city where Mideast oil titans spend not billions but "squillions" on the most luxurious homes in the world.

Yet, London is a place where people still hang out their laundry, counting on good old-fashioned fresh air to dry clothes, linens, blankets, towels and even pillows.

Speaking of old-fashioned ways of doing things, I still write in cursive. I print only when making a sign, such as "FREE" if I have something to give away at the end of my driveway.

Now, I'll bet you didn't know writing in cursive was outdated. Neither did I until this past week, when a 30-something person enlightened me. She told me that young people these days don't use cursive.

Aren't they teaching cursive in school? I asked. Yes, she replied, but we never use it. So why is that, I wondered out loud. Because printing is easier than cursive, she explained. This revelation caused me to have yet another "hm-mm" moment.

I beg to disagree, I countered. You see with printing, you lift your pen with every letter. But with marvelously supple ever-flowing cursive, one letter glides right into the next, creating a beautiful string of consonants and vowels.

My, how times have changed. More than 35 years ago, when we moved into our home, the highway noise was non-existent. But as the years have passed and economies have flourished, there is a constant throb of car and truck traffic in the backdrop of our otherwise serene setting on the edge of the South Dakota prairie. I used to abhor the traffic as unwanted noise.

However, I've gotten so used to it that it has become more of a purr to me, a scintillating crooning that tells me I am home. The traffic noise is now a pulsating almost rhythmic character that moves briskly, reminding me I am not alone and that life goes on around me.

2010©Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national and state award-winning columnist.Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 and 2010 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took first-place awards statewide. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at
www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.comand find her on Facebook.　

　

　

Hey, Joe, have you lost your boxers?

Have you ever noticed that when people go outside they seem to undress. How else would you explain the pair of men's boxers hanging on that guard rail?

And what about those socks draped over the fire hydrant?

How in the world does someone lose their britches on a highway overpass? I mean, what's that all about?

Someones running shoe is hanging upside down on a fencepost along I-29, a busy highway near my house. I wonder if the owner will ever recognize it as he drives by at 75 miles per hour.

I've been looking for someone walking around with just one shoe on, but so far I haven't seen anyone who matches that description. I'll keep looking.

This makes me wonder how someone can lose just one shoe. Why is it that you never see a pair of shoes alongside the road. I haven't lost one shoe outside anywhere in my entire life.

T-shirts, jackets, backpacks, cowboy boots, bedroom slippers, umbrellas, mittens, scarves, purses, flip-flops - I've seen them all at one time or another abandoned along streets and sidewalks, in ditches and parking lots.

Now losing your hat, I get that. Hats have been blowing away since indigenous people in ancient times wore things on their heads, like banana leaves, to keep from getting wet.

Hats easily blow away, especially if you don't tie them down.

You see red ones, blue ones, yellow ones and green ones lying on the ground. Ball caps and bonnets, stocking hats and shower caps, safety helmets and cowboy hats all lost to the wind.

It's those other articles of clothing that baffle me.

As far as the boxer shorts, I can only think of two reasonable explanations for them. One: they could have flown out the window on the way to the laundry mat. And as far as the second, well, we won't go there.

The sight of discarded clothing is oddly funny and a tad bit sad to me. At least that's how I felt when I noticed a pile of shoes and socks the neighborhood kids left behind on the lot across the street after a game of touch football.

I wonder if parents are so busy today that they don't even notice their kids shoes and socks are missing?

When I was a kid, I had only one pair of shoes, a few pairs of socks, and they had to last all year. Most adults I know share the same story.

There are some folks who have had perfectly good reasons for discarding their clothing, like the people in a 2007 Fox news story I read from Niagara, N.Y. It stated, "Canadian shoppers taking advantage of the parity between the U.S. and Canadian dollars are leaving behind more than cash when the head home. They're leaving behind their old clothes."

According to the article, the shoppers wore their new clothes home so they wouldn't have to pay a duty when crossing the border into Canada. Smart, eh? The old clothes were left behind in parking lots, dressing rooms and restrooms at malls and shopping plazas in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area.

Leave it to New Yorkers to come up with a solution to a strange problem. At one of the malls, managers put collection bins near the exits where Canadian customers could deposit their unwanted items. The clothing was then given to the needy.



Now that's what I call a happy ending to all those clothes left behind.

2010 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon
is a national and state award-winning columnist. Her columns have won
first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and
Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 and 2010 South Dakota
Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took first-place awards
statewide. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at
www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.comand find her on Facebook.