Monday, September 29, 2008

What Our Mothers Wore

What Our Mothers Wore

Mothers wore house dresses. Occasionally you might spot a mom in clam diggers or pedal pushers. Shorts were for kids. A grown woman was never seen in them. My mother owned some; I know because she handed them down to me, but I never saw her wear them, likewise I have no recollection of my mother wearing a bathing suit. Yet, I do recall that she owned at least one bathing cap, because that too, was passed down to me. Women and girls had to wear bathing caps in public pools, because it was said their long hair would foul the drains. In the ‘60’s boys began to wear long hair and the rule was changed – more of the blatant chauvinism we meekly accepted in the 40’s and 50’s. If women wore full length pants, it was for a very specific purpose, horseback riding, flying an airplane, or because she was a strange person. Dresses were worn to play tennis.

Other mothers wore nice dresses, with stockings held up by girdles or garter belts, high heeled shoes, jewelry and lipstick. My mother wore cotton housedresses with brown oxfords and bobby sox. She had very few clothes and they were quite worn. She said she would not wear junk jewelry, only the real thing. The only jewelry she owned was her tiny chip of a diamond engagement ring and a narrow gold band, she wore no other jewelry. The gold band wore so thin it broke and my dad had the two halves mounted on new gold bands and they each wore half of the original ring.

My mother was beautiful – she resembled Lauren Bacall, and she had a very good figure. I felt sorry for other girls who had old moms or fat moms. She was especially pretty when she got dressed up to go to the General Engineering department’s Christmas party. She had a new party dress each year – probably because last years’ was ruined. I remember wine stains and cigarette burns on her clothes after a party. Most of the party clothes were rayon and melted very easily when touched by a cigarette. Since everyone smoked, that was pretty likely to happen. One year her party dress was bright red taffeta and she looked so pretty – she always wore Apple Blossom perfume. When my dad saw her in her dress all ready to go to the party, he said, “Wow, red!” Baby brother Kenny mimicked him and said “Wow, red!” What he had noticed was how good she smelled and he thought “Red” meant good-smelling. For years after we said, “Wow, you smell red!” when someone smelled good.

When we became the same size we shared party dresses. I didn’t like that arrangement because if she borrowed my dress, it came back with cigarette holes and if I wore hers, I had to wear a dress with burn marks

Because I was the oldest of five children, Mom was pregnant a fair amount of the time. She had more to wear then because friends passed on their maternity clothes to her. I remember one pink maternity dress she wore when expecting Valery. She looked cute in it and my cousin Connie, who must have been three years old at the time said, “Aunt Ruthanne, can I have that dress when you outgrow it?”

My grandmother Mimi treated me like her baby doll. She took me shopping, and to ladies lunches with fashion shows. We usually went to Edy’s where I would have a deviled egg sandwich and a hot fudge sundae, or to Capwell’s restaurant where I had a half avocado stuffed with crab meat. If we went to San Francisco, we went to Townsends where she ate creamed spinach –I wouldn’t touch the stuff. Going downtown or to San Francisco was a big deal and we got all dressed up – the grown up women always wore hats and gloves. Often we had our picture taken by a sidewalk photographer. Mimi usually sent for the photograph.

Mimi dressed well – often in a hand-knit dress she had made herself. In truth, she was not very attractive, but I never realized it because she was always so well groomed and such a coy flirt. She smelled of lavender and exuded feminity.

Like many teenagers, I became ashamed of my mother and the way she dressed. I made and bought her clothes for birthdays and Christmases which I think she took as criticism. And it was. My gifts often ended up crumpled on the closet floor and I never saw her wear them. Of course, I gave her things I would have liked for myself, so they were probably more to the taste of a 50’s teenage girl than a mature, approaching middle-age (37!), woman. And so we entered an age of mutual disapproval.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Under the Rug

Today while vacuuming threads from the wine-colored rug in my dining/sewing room, I was seized with serious case of déjà-vu. It wasn’t far for my mind to wander from the rug under foot to the old burgundy one in my Leona Street bedroom which lay on the asphalt tile, covering the spot where a built-in bed frame had been ripped out, leaving an untiled patch in the middle of the floor.


One of the men from General Engineering at Owens-Illinois Glass Company got wall-to-wall carpeting installed in his home and gave my dad his old surplus rug. It was green and looked nice in the living room of our Athol Avenue house. It coordinated well with the green and white ivy-on-a-trellis wallpaper and the pale green Venetian blinds. Dad snatched up the blinds when they became surplus at the office. He brought them home, disassembled them, painstakingly painted each slat, and then reassembled them. Recycling is not a new concept. “New” things in our family usually were surplus, discarded, outgrown, or otherwise rejected by the previous owners. We acquired dogs to horses, and bricks to bridge piers this way. Admittedly my Dad was quick to spot an opportunity, but I don’t think he was atypical. I think much more got recycled by the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and lived with rationing and scarcity during World War II.

Back to the green rug: we were delighted with it. Previously we had known only hardwood floors which Dad refinished every time Mom went to the hospital to have a baby. However, one Saturday morning while our parents slept, my brother decided to “borrow” Dad’s India ink and pens to make a sign for our Kool-Aid stand. The ink spilled on the green carpet and nothing could be done to remove the spot. So, the rug was dyed deep burgundy. (In those days things were repaired, not replaced.) It worked very well; you couldn’t tell where the stain had been. Of course, the rug no longer looked perfect in the room and it attracted every speck of lint or animal hair in the house. But, that wasn’t a problem very long, because we soon moved to a hundred year old house on Leona Street. The new living room was much larger and came with a big pink rug.

My bedroom in the new house came with a built-in double bed frame that matched the knotty pine that reached six feet up the twelve foot walls. But the bed frame had to go because my bed and bedding were twin-size. And no one was standing by to recycle a double bed mattress and linens. However, when the bed frame was removed, we learned that the asphalt tile was laid after the bed was built. The tile quit at the edge of the former bed. No problem! We had the burgundy rug which was not needed anywhere, so it became mine. I was thrilled! Not only was I the only one in the family with my own room, but I was the only one with a rug in my bedroom.

Now you have to understand that this house was old, in the country, and inhabited by seven people, two dogs, and two cats. Consequently, it was very hard to keep clean. And that brings me back to vacuuming burgundy rugs. Our vacuum cleaner was not very good, hand-me-down that it was—someone got rid of it for a good reason. Running the wand of this Electrolux over the rug did nothing to change the appearance of the rug. I found the only way to remove all that settled there, was to get on my hands and knees and with the suctioning end of the hose, comb over every square inch of the bloody thing. Just like I do now to pick up the threads that drift from my quilting projects to today’s wine red scourge.