WHAT"S A CLOTHESPIN?

        It was around 1968 and I had just built my first home after college graduation at 1932 90th Street in Clive, Iowa. It was a typical split foyer style for the time. In the lower level was a small area for a washer and dryer and we had no outside clothes line as most areas beginning around that time had restrictions on them.

      One night we had the teenage boy next door baby sit for our daughter, LaRisa. Somehow she knocked over a potted plant in the dining room and it soiled a nearby window drape. The sitter asked La Risa to go get a clothes pin to hold back the drape and so it could dry. 

      She said, "What's a clothespin?" Even though she had seen one I am sure at her Grandma's, she either simply forgot or didn't understand. It was a great example how some things  slowly become extinct and we sometimes forget their usage. When's the last time you saw clothes hanging out on a clothesline? Personally, I use the wooden clothespins a lot still today to seal food items.