Residents in one small town are embroiled in a heated battle, over all things, the right to hang clothing out on the line to dry: U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry. And it’s happening in my home state of Pennsylvania no less.

What’s all the flap about? It seems local officials in Perkasie, Pa., in the southeast part of the state, are annoyed by the electricity-saving, environmentally friendly practice of rigging up a clothes line and letting one’s blankets – and undies – drip dry in the breeze. And it’s not only the town’s powers that be who are clamoring for this once outdated but now back in vogue practice to stop. Neighbors are also dropping anonymous notes, asserting that they don’t want to see “underwear flapping about.”

Seriously? Then don’t look. Oh, but then there’s the other rationale, the practice makes the neighborhood “look like trailer trash.” Yikes! Them thar’s fightin’ words.

When I was growing up on a 120-acre dairy farm, we hung our clothes (intimate apparel included) and bedding out on the line all summer long. And I’ll never forget the spring-fresh scent and air-dried softness of my sheets. I also hold fond memories of a teenage prank my cousin and I pulled on my aunt one summer eve. Late one night, when she asked us to take a load of laundry outside and hang it on the line, we seized the black of darkness to clothes-pin those babies on the line upside-down, catty-cornered and all askew, leaving the neighborhood to ponder the next day what exactly my aunt had been drinking the evening before. Ah, those were the days.

Of course, back in those days, our closest neighbors lived a quarter-mile away, and even if they’d been right in our backyards, they wouldn’t have complained. After all, they were, egads, doing the exact same thing. Not only were we a kinder and gentler bunch back then, but we were also earth-friendlier … without even realizing it.

Electric indoor dryers account for “about 6 percent of U.S. residential electricity use,” according to the executive director of Project Laundry List, “a group that argues people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers.” That means if we were to all stop using our dryers and switch to line-hanging instead, we could save more than 56 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per month or nearly 674 kWh per year. And that’s not to mention the money we’d save on our electricity bills.

With green benefits like that, I think it’s high time that neighbors return to living by the golden rule and stop with the whole “keeping up appearances” charade already. Shut your mouth and pass the clothes pins, please.

What do you think?