Last Monday morning was particularly blue – but not for the usual dark reasons.

My routine road trip to Erie for a doctor’s appointment was particularly eye-opening…and captivating.

It was ten a.m. as I headed toward Sugar Grove, home to many Amish families. On the way to town, I passed three separate Amish buggies heading toward Warren. One of the young men waved to me and I responded to his friendly gesture.

Driving northwest out of Sugar Grove toward Highway 86, I always pass a dozen Amish farms. This is why I chose Wellman Road over its parallel route about a mile away. I love the farms, barns and many outbuildings that adorn the hills.

But wait! What is this? It was a huge line of blue and white laundry. Of course! It was Monday. It was only the first meter of a dozen houses with long lines of blue shirts, pants and skirts stretching out in front of them. Each Amish house was identifiable by its packed clotheslines.

I slow down to admire the work, the cleanliness and the careful arrangement of the laundry. Although I seriously considered stopping to take a few photos with my phone, I remembered that the Amish prefer not to have their photos taken. If someone in the house went out, I didn’t want to be near their front yard, clicking. So, with no traffic behind me, I slowed to 5 mph and drank in the refined geometry of their clotheslines.

All the blue clothes were hung by size, from the smallest up to Dad. Tiny toddler shirts, little boy shirts, bigger boy shirts, and then daddy, daddy, daddy. Next, the pants, hanging from daddy’s waist down, down, down, with some overalls at the little end. Blue skirts and tops were also hung by size, followed by a large batch of white aprons. In one house, white aprons blended into a long row of sheets and pillowcases.

I sat there thinking about not only the labor of manually washing all those clothes, but also the time it took to sort them by sizes as they were hung. In the house next door, two full clotheslines hung high in two trees. The pulley system sent the smaller sizes over the open branches, and it brought back old memories.

In the dark days, before modern clothes dryers, our apartment’s clothesline ran from a second-story hallway window to the pear tree across the yard. I vividly remember carrying the wet, heavy laundry basket, sometimes dragging it down the hallway, from the kitchen to the window. To make it easier for me, Mom sorted our clothes by type as they went through the last wringer in the laundry basket.

Standing on a stool, I lowered the top window, hanging our clothes on the pulley, starting with our underwear. The bras and panties were small and light, best pushed as far as possible. Mom said, “You know, it would be prettier if you hung all your panties together, then all mine.” I never asked myself why. My undershirts came next. Homemade souvenirs, almost forgotten.

On Monday, I smiled as I looked up in the tree at the Amish lady’s pulley line. The little white clothes flapped at the top, gradually descending into the long blue line. And all this, the heavily loaded line had to be pulled and put into place. I could almost feel him in my arms.

By the time I got to the highway, my thoughts were consumed with the Amish women’s workday, with the physical side of running a household with many children and many bellies wanting three meals a day. Additionally, Laundry Mondays were hidden after each Sabbath.

Six hours later, when I returned, things had changed. Dry laundry had been collected from half of the houses. A few had more lines filled and one had taken the family’s clothes and replaced them with sheets, sheets, sheets and more white socks than I had ever seen in the same place.

As I headed over the final hill, small groups of Amish children were walking home from school, huddling along the side of the road. A group of five little blue boys in straw hats were jumping, swinging, and jumping together, laughing. And they waved. Three girls in bonnets, almost teenagers, walked leisurely, absorbed in their chatter. A hundred meters away, four little girls were laughing on their way home.

That’s when I realized the bonnets needed to be dried inside out. I hadn’t seen any on any clotheslines that morning.

Always filled with respect for our kind neighbors dressed in blue, I particularly enjoyed my day there and back in their Busti neighborhood. It’s hard to think of the long blue lines from their laundry day without smiling in admiration.

I definitely need to schedule more doctor appointments on Monday.

Marcy O’Brien writes from Warren, Pennsylvania.