The clothesline pulley was bolted to the window frame. Two wheels. A rope. The rope went from your window to the pole in the yard or to the building across the alley. The pulley was the bridge between the apartment and the air. You clipped the clothes to the line and you turned the pulley and the clothes went out and the clothes came back and the whole operation was conducted from the kitchen window in your slippers.

My mother ran the pulley every morning. The squeak of the wheel was the alarm clock of the alley. Every building had a pulley and every pulley had a different sound. Mrs. Petroski's pulley screamed. The Garcias' pulley hummed. Our pulley clicked. The alley was an orchestra of laundry.

The clothesline protocol was unwritten and absolute. Monday was wash day. Your line was your line. You did not touch another woman's rope. If a shirt fell into the alley you brought it back folded. The clothesline was a treaty between neighbors and the pulley was the mechanism of diplomacy.

In winter the clothes froze on the line. Shirts stiff as cardboard. Pants that stood up by themselves. My mother pulled in frozen sheets that crackled when she folded them. The frozen laundry was the sculpture of the tenement. Temporary art that nobody called art.

The dryer killed the pulley. The dryer is in the basement. The dryer costs quarters. The dryer does not require you to lean out a window and negotiate with the weather. The dryer does not squeak. The dryer does not connect your apartment to the sky. The pulley made the laundry a public act. The dryer made it private. The alley is quiet now. The air between the buildings has nothing to carry.

See also: Clothesline, Laundry Line