Standing Up for the Right to Hang Out
Friday, November 20, 2009
By Izzy Lyman
John Birch Society
Carin Froehlich of Perkasie, Pennsylvania is staging her own private little rebellion against the powers-that-be.
The 54-year-old grandmother is fighting for the right to … bear arms? … host a Bible study? … fly an American flag?
No, no, and no.
Mrs. Froehlich is fighting for the right to hang her laundry on an outdoor clothesline in her front yard.
Although there is no ordinance in Perkasie currently prohibiting an increasingly retro practice, Mrs. Froehlich was asked by a local official to “stop drying clothes in the sun.” Neighbors have sent her anonymous (the cowards!) notes complaining that they don’t want to see her “unmentionables,” although this clothesline freedom fighter is a discreet lady. While she continues to hang garments and linens outside, the underwear is hung indoors.
Yes, it’s all utterly ridiculous, but Carin Froehlich and others like her are enmeshed in the proverbial David v. Goliath property-rights fight. The opposition are typically large, lawyered-up housing associations of condominiums and townhouses. (Froehlich’s 18th century farmhouse is located across-the-street from a neighborhood of pretty, suburban-style homes.)
These housing associations often require residents to adhere to strict covenants that often forbid green-friendly, money-saving practices. Besides clotheslines, some ban solar panels, awnings, and even vegetable gardens, and violators face stiff penalties.
Considering that nearly 60 million Americans live in such associations, it’s hardly a "fringe" infringement of property rights.
Uniform aesthetics and stable property values are the core reasons why many Americans voluntarily submit to such uncreative restrictions and rat on neighbors who don’t comply with the rules. In exchange, they value the opportunity to live in safe, modern, well-maintained residential areas with amenities like pools and tennis courts.
But more than a few independent-minded Americans are having none of it.
Project Laundry List is on an ambitious national mission to make air-drying and cold-water washing a widely practiced frugal virtue. The organization has even compiled a list of “laundry heroes.” Among them is Richard Penley, president of a Maine-based company that sells wooden and plastic clothespins.
Project Laundry List also has an ongoing petition campaign which requests the “First Family of the United States to line dry their clothes on the White House lawn during a one day photo op. This symbolic act will send the message to America and the world that our nation is ready to regain energy independence.”
It’s all in good fun, and it’s also deadly serious.
Some states, like Florida, have enacted powerful pro-clothesline legislation, a direct challenge to draconian zoning laws and the mandates of overzealous landlords: “The adoption of an ordinance by a governing body … which prohibits … clotheslines, or other energy devices based on renewable resources is expressly prohibited.”
Whether it’s a debate over laundry, fences, noise, or animals — what citizens have a right to do or not do with their plot of land, however humble or grand, continues to be one of the country’s most contentious and colorful battles.
Hang in there, Carin!
Isabel Lyman, author of The Homeschooling Revolution
, blogs at http://thecastillochronicles.blogspot.com.
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