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.