Thinking back to when I was a little kid back on Strong Street and I must admit, we definitely dressed a little different than the kids today. Jake always wore overalls. So did dad. Church dress meant clean overalls. As little girls, my sisters and myself always wore dresses. As the poor family in town we were given a lot of "hand me downs" and that was good. Josephine handed hers down to me and I handed mine down to Donna, Donna to Mary, and Mary to Dorothy. By the time they got down to Dorothy they were pretty tattered. But when one of the ladies from town showed up with a bag of clothes that her daughters had outgrown it was like a gift from heaven. These were clothes that were brand new to our system. Sometimes there were even shoes which was really great.
The way the shoe thing worked was we each got a new pair of shoes for the first day of school and we wore them until we could not get our feet in them any more and then handed them down to the next kid. Some times we would finish out the last month or so of school barefooted. I liked that best. I hated shoes. We had 2 choices for shoes; black or brown. I think I was in 7th grade when I found out there was another choice. That was "saddle oxfords" and they were for the very rich kids. Those were white with either brown or black through the center part of the shoe hence the name "saddle oxford". If you owned a pair of those you had to put white polish on the white part and that was just a waste of money as far as we were concerned.
I know I have told you about how mother used to save feed sacks that were pretty fabric and make us dresses. I told you how I thought my name was Gooch when I was a kid. Now I want to tell you something off the cuff here. I sell on ebay and several years back a lady gave me a big pile of those feed sacks to sell. I think there were probably 40 or 50 one yard pieces. They brought some very good bids. One of them I sold to a lady in Korea for $48.00 plus shipping. The lowest priced one brought $9.99. That is for 1 square yard pieces of fabric. Made some good money on that lot.
Jeans or slacks were NEVER worn. Girls wore dresses. That is what we wore. Even in the summer there were no shorts. Dresses. That was it. We played in the dirt and made mud pies in dresses. We always kept the dress that was in the best shape for our "Sunday go to meeting dress." No wearing the everyday dress to church. That would have been sacrilegious. We could shinny up the ladder to the hayloft and watch the cat giving birth in a pile of hay in our everyday dress. We could pick corn and throw it on the wagon in our everyday dress. But you know something? I can not remember any dress I ever owned except one my Aunt Helen gave me when I was in 6th grade. It was store bought and was a grayish green everglaze cotton fabric and it had a tie at the neck which had 2 white daisy's on it. I wore that damn dress until it almost cut me in half.
When dresses got to the point that they were pretty much thread bare, the went to the rag bag. Periodically mother would empty the rag bag and take her scissors and cut out any good fabric. This was then cut into strips and each strip had a slit cut in each end. The strips were then laced together through the slits and rolled into a big ball. When enough big balls were rolled up, they were taken to the weaver lady who would weave them into a rug. The rug was probably 8-10 feet long and roughly 28-30 inches wide. They were beautiful and I still like to make them today. Back then the weaver lady charged $2.00- $3.00 to make and they were very sturdy and wore forever.
Back to the shoe thing. I am sure we had socks. I know for sure Josephine did because they came up to her knees and when she got out of sight of the house, she rolled them down so here legs were bare. She always was a dicey female. Oh, and we always had to wear a slip! Our dresses were always cotton, so there was no danger of a boy seeing through and lusting after us, but we were always afraid that if we did not have our slip on that someone would know. A bra was never anything that I ever needed because I just never had any boobs to speak of.
I must tell you, mother always wore a hat to church. Well, any time she dressed up she wore a hat. Women were expected to cover their head in church. She could have walked in stark naked and caused less of a stir then what would have happened had she not worn her hat. Oh, and that damned hat pin was good for getting our attention should our shallow little minds wander!
Funny, looking back, that I remember so little about clothes when I was little. I guess back then we were more worried about starving to death than about freezing to death. I want you to know it could get cold back in those days. But we could make snow ice cream with out fear of radiation fall out. Course we knew not to eat the yellow snow. We could snap an icicle off the eaves and suck on that and convince our selves that it was good and filled us up. I would dry up and blow away now before I would eat an icicle. God only knows what is in our atmosphere today and he ain't talking.
So, I don't know just what the point of this was when I started writing tonight, but I am pretty sure I am done. Going to be a long day tomorrow. Hope I have time to get my naps in before Jeopardy. In the mean time, just be kind to each other. You never know what kind of burden the other guy is carrying.
Peace out!
The way the shoe thing worked was we each got a new pair of shoes for the first day of school and we wore them until we could not get our feet in them any more and then handed them down to the next kid. Some times we would finish out the last month or so of school barefooted. I liked that best. I hated shoes. We had 2 choices for shoes; black or brown. I think I was in 7th grade when I found out there was another choice. That was "saddle oxfords" and they were for the very rich kids. Those were white with either brown or black through the center part of the shoe hence the name "saddle oxford". If you owned a pair of those you had to put white polish on the white part and that was just a waste of money as far as we were concerned.
I know I have told you about how mother used to save feed sacks that were pretty fabric and make us dresses. I told you how I thought my name was Gooch when I was a kid. Now I want to tell you something off the cuff here. I sell on ebay and several years back a lady gave me a big pile of those feed sacks to sell. I think there were probably 40 or 50 one yard pieces. They brought some very good bids. One of them I sold to a lady in Korea for $48.00 plus shipping. The lowest priced one brought $9.99. That is for 1 square yard pieces of fabric. Made some good money on that lot.
Jeans or slacks were NEVER worn. Girls wore dresses. That is what we wore. Even in the summer there were no shorts. Dresses. That was it. We played in the dirt and made mud pies in dresses. We always kept the dress that was in the best shape for our "Sunday go to meeting dress." No wearing the everyday dress to church. That would have been sacrilegious. We could shinny up the ladder to the hayloft and watch the cat giving birth in a pile of hay in our everyday dress. We could pick corn and throw it on the wagon in our everyday dress. But you know something? I can not remember any dress I ever owned except one my Aunt Helen gave me when I was in 6th grade. It was store bought and was a grayish green everglaze cotton fabric and it had a tie at the neck which had 2 white daisy's on it. I wore that damn dress until it almost cut me in half.
When dresses got to the point that they were pretty much thread bare, the went to the rag bag. Periodically mother would empty the rag bag and take her scissors and cut out any good fabric. This was then cut into strips and each strip had a slit cut in each end. The strips were then laced together through the slits and rolled into a big ball. When enough big balls were rolled up, they were taken to the weaver lady who would weave them into a rug. The rug was probably 8-10 feet long and roughly 28-30 inches wide. They were beautiful and I still like to make them today. Back then the weaver lady charged $2.00- $3.00 to make and they were very sturdy and wore forever.
Back to the shoe thing. I am sure we had socks. I know for sure Josephine did because they came up to her knees and when she got out of sight of the house, she rolled them down so here legs were bare. She always was a dicey female. Oh, and we always had to wear a slip! Our dresses were always cotton, so there was no danger of a boy seeing through and lusting after us, but we were always afraid that if we did not have our slip on that someone would know. A bra was never anything that I ever needed because I just never had any boobs to speak of.
I must tell you, mother always wore a hat to church. Well, any time she dressed up she wore a hat. Women were expected to cover their head in church. She could have walked in stark naked and caused less of a stir then what would have happened had she not worn her hat. Oh, and that damned hat pin was good for getting our attention should our shallow little minds wander!
Funny, looking back, that I remember so little about clothes when I was little. I guess back then we were more worried about starving to death than about freezing to death. I want you to know it could get cold back in those days. But we could make snow ice cream with out fear of radiation fall out. Course we knew not to eat the yellow snow. We could snap an icicle off the eaves and suck on that and convince our selves that it was good and filled us up. I would dry up and blow away now before I would eat an icicle. God only knows what is in our atmosphere today and he ain't talking.
So, I don't know just what the point of this was when I started writing tonight, but I am pretty sure I am done. Going to be a long day tomorrow. Hope I have time to get my naps in before Jeopardy. In the mean time, just be kind to each other. You never know what kind of burden the other guy is carrying.
Peace out!
