The Path, a memory

The folks who live there in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas now might wonder how it came to be. That little narrow foot path between the northwest corner of the back fence of 8811 Old Homestead, and the back door of 8814 Eden Valley. I know exactly how it came to into being. You see, my feet wore it there.

There was the daily tramp from where I lived with my Mom and Dad up to where my Grandma and Grandpa lived. It was a daily exercise as I had quickly learned that if Mom said I couldn’t have a cookie, that little walk up to Grandma’s house would place one in my grimy little hands. Of course during the long hot summers of childhood, I could always nip into Grandma’s kitchen and snatch the salt shaker before raiding the cherry tomato patch that Grandpa always planted.

As I grew older, I began to notice that those big folks around me often did some interesting things. Most fascinating to me at the time was washing clothes. You see, Grandma had this wonderful thing called a washing machine. It was old fashioned by today’s standards and could safely be left out in the weather so it was never necessary to build a shelter around it.

At least once a week, my Mom’s feet would join mine on that path as we went to Grandma’s house to do the weekly washing. Mine, and all the ladie's clothes were washed separately with the under clothes. The men’s work clothes, despite being uniforms supplied by the company, were brought home to be laundered separately, and ironed.

In conjunction with the washing machine, there was the clothesline. Grandma and Grandpa owned a full half acre, so Grandpa and Dad had room to build a truly huge clothesline. There were three upright old telephone poles with metal and wood cross pieces. Those cross pieces held up four thick wire lines. These lines stretched east and west across my path up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. With no trees over the lines, any clothes hung on them could get sun all day. This arrangement was important in the winter, or on damp days when it took more than the summertime thirty minutes for the cloths to dry.

Later I found myself hauling clothes that Mom had washed at home up to that clothesline, and wearing that path just a little deeper. Later I pounded it deeper still going up to Grandma’s house to get the washing she needed done and taking it down to our house where Mom would wash it in her newer style washer; one that had to stay inside the house. Then, the clothes crisply dry from the dryer and folded, I’d haul them back up to Grandma’s along that same path that went under the old clothesline. That path and the clothesline were still there when I sold, what was by then my property, and moved to Lone Oak. The clothesline is surely gone by now. But I’m sure it would take some work to remove that foot path.