i imagined the black iron poles of our clothesline , which were beautifully embellished with bluing and rust , branded the ground beneath my mother and i that morning with two dark elongated crosses , and the shadows of the five clothesline wires connected these crosses along the lower bricks of our neighbors patio wall and formed an undivided length of musical bars over which the shadows of the clothespins were scattered like the notes of a jittery jig , this being the late fifties when the ritualized chore of monday morning laundry and hanging out clothes on the clothesline ranked as both a religion and an art in our american home .