Nicole Gates Anderson Dear Diary:
I stretched out on a hammock in a friend’s backyard in Bushwick. Music and voices crackled from the streets, and a tattered American flag rippled just beyond the fence. The hammock was secured to a wall on one side and a clothesline tower on the other. Ivy crept up in and around the metal bars of the tower.
Backyards in Brooklyn are still populated with these tall, latticed structures, even though clotheslines rarely extend from them now. Those new to the borough often ask what purpose these towers serve.
In Carroll Gardens, where I grew up, clotheslines stretched from the back of nearly every house to these free-standing towers. I would come home from school and watch pants, shirts and socks dangle in the air above lawn chairs and flower beds until one of our neighbors would eventually stick her head out the window, extend her arms and reel in the line.
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