I never knew that there were so many restrictions to personal freedom in Texas till I read a letter from one of the harassed residents to the editor of Dallas Morning News recently. The writer lamented that the home owners association (HOA) of the community she lives in has outlawed clotheslines. And as such she had been forced to use the noisy, power-hungry drier.
The letter was followed up by an interesting and humourour column by Steve Blow, one of my favourite columnists. In this easy-to-read essay Blow fondly remembered his childhood fun times in the backyard when he and his siblings had swung off clotheslines much to the irritation of their mother and also about the fresh, crispy feel of sun-dried clothes etc.
I wonder what is going wrong with Texas, on the one hand there is extreme freedom. One can buy M-16 machine guns off the shelf in a hunting goods store and shoot anyone who steps into their yard without permission. All in the name of Freedom to protect self and family. But on the other hand there are extreme restrictions. If one wants to go hiking, he/ she has to follow a pre-set, well-defined and often barricaded and paved hiking trail. And if one wants to have a compound wall around their property the HOA has to approve it and if they don't your home site has to remain naked and exposed.
And now there is this new law which I am becoming aware of. You can't dry your clothes in the sun. That is it, you have to use a drier, spend electricity and pay the bill. No wonder corporations are making money in the US. If 300 million people are forced to not use the FREE unlimited natural resource of solar energy and use exhorbitantly priced, finite resource of electricity, the corporations which provide electricity will obviously make tons of money.
In places like Texas where 8 months a year there is abundant and bright sunlight one should encourage use of solar energy for everything: Lighting, heating, drying clothes and whatever else possible. But no, that would be cheap, only poor dry their clothes in the sun, not rich Texans. Anyway, who am I to coment on these idiosyncracies... I am after all not from here.
Friday, July 11, 2008
In Texas it is illegal to dry clothes in the sun!
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2 comments:
An HOA deed restriction is a long ways from saying it is against the law in Texas to hang your clothes out to dry. Every HOA is different, and the HOA in your state is just as likely to make such rules as any in Texas.
Just because an HOA has made a deed restriction against it doesn't mean its "illegal" to hang your clothes out in all of Texas. The HOA in any state could be just as likely to make such a rule, and has nothing to do with the state government.
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