High wire: Two households linked in a cartoon, connected by a clothesline
Above a whimsical courtyard in eastend Toronto, an ordinary old clothesline is doing something extraordinary.
Look up at just the right moment and you might spot a homemade storybook, or a coded message, or even a life-sized paper super-hero flutter across the line between two apartment balconies.
This is the story of an unlikely corridor of communication — high above the cosmos blooms, a secret garden of words floating back and forth. Here, the clothesline has magically connected two pairs of fantasy-story fans; at one end, 30-something roommates Mandy and Emily, and at the other, sisters Fiona and Imogen, 11 and 7.
“With the power of words, you can cross an ocean or you can cross a clothesline.” MANDY PIPHER
The four have never met all together, not face to face, yet they write stories for each other with elaborate illustrations and craft secret messages in a code based on ancient runes like those in The Lord of the Rings.
In a wireless age, these mysterious missives depend on a wire — a lowtech wire whose “attachments” need the click of a clothes peg and are “sent” by moving the wire slowly from the pulley, hand over hand, until it reaches the other side.
“It’s exciting to go outside and find a note there,” Fiona said. “We like getting the messages in runes; they’re our secret code. It’s fun to have something only we can decode.”
A line once strung so tenants could dry their clothes suddenly is doing so much more; connecting strangers, introducing surprise to daily routines and fostering a hunger for words and the stories they tell.
It started simply one rainy spring day when the sisters sent a scribbled note across the clothesline that asked: “What is your name? Send a reply back across the clothesline,” followed by a sketch of their family cat Charlie. A final note asked: “Do you like to sing?” The bait was set. In her apartment, freelance editor Mandy Pipher saw something odd approach her balcony.
“I thought, wait — that’s not clothes. I rescued the notes from the rain and started to read, and the smile didn’t leave my face.”
Pipher and roommate Emily Hill, fans of storybooks and the power of imagination, knew this was a rare chance to build a friendship based solely on the handwritten word.
“With the power of words, you can cross an ocean or you can cross a clothesline — people come together through language,” said Pipher, 31, who has headed to England’s prestigious Oxford University to do a master’s degree in English language.
Excited, Pipher sent back a handprinted introduction: “I like to sing, and Emily does too. We also like to dance and read books about whales. We don’t have a cat right now, but we wish we did. Is Charlie a kind ruler of the house? Emily is a much better drawer than I am, and she says when she’s done making dinner, she’ll draw you a picture of her fish. What are your names? Thanks for writing. This is fun, Mandy.”
At the other end of the clothesline, the reply triggered sheer delight.
“We’re not a big (mobile) device family; we don’t want the kids too engaged with screens,” said their father, Jeff McLarnon, a community artist and librarian.
Excitement grew when the girls received an almost scientific sketch of Hill’s pet aquarium fish, Auden McMolotov II, being eyed by the girls’ cat, Charlie, thinking “Yum!”
The two households were linked in a cartoon, delivered by clothesline.