Wednesday
Wednesday
morning, as soon as breakfast was over and everything had been
cleaned up in the kitchen, Mama brought the laid-aside clothing
from the previous day's ironing into the house and put the pile
down beside the rocking chairs. Aunt Merica got little bundles
of rolled-up scraps of cloth from the basket in the closet and,
from the wardrobe shelf, took down the heavy little black box
with its stubbed gray corners. I liked this box. It held dozens
and dozens of buttons: black and white; bone, metal, wood, and
mother of pearl; all shades of color. I liked to pour them out
and try to find matching pairs or line them up in descending size
or same sizes or same colors. Or choose an especially pretty one
for Aunt Merica to sew on my doll's dress. Mama and Aunt Merica
took their own sewing baskets from the top of the sewing machine
hood and settled themselves to do the week's mending.
Aunt
Merica darned socks. She would stick her fist down the long stocking
that belonged to me or the short dark silky Sunday sock that belonged
to Daddy, pull it tight enough to reveal any weakening at the
toe, and then attack the spot with her long darning needle threaded
with the appropriate darning cotton. Back and forth, back and
forth, in and out that needle went.
Mama
turned Daddy's shirt collar, if it was ready for turning. They
laughed and talked about the time Miz So-and-So was wearing a
twice-turned dress. Now, only shirt collars got turned.
Aunt
Merica darned weak places in the tablecloths, the dishtowels,
and maybe even the sheets. Sheets, however, when they began to
show weakness, were torn apart down the middle, the torn edges
hemmed and the two outer sides sewed together on the sewing machine
to form a new sheet, strong in the center and weak at the edges
where it mattered less. This morning they might lay aside a sheet
to do later, when they got out the sewing machine.
Rips
were mended, buttons tightened or replaced, snags patched. I liked
to watch the patch being fitted to the underside of the garment
beneath the hole. If it were one of our dresses or one of the
colored aprons being worked on, great care was taken to align
the design of the patch to that of the garment so that at even
a near distance, the patch went unnoticed. The patch's edges were
carefully turned under and the whole thing pinned in place. A
quick turn over of the garment to the right side enabled Mama
to check to see that everything was smooth and flat. After the
patch's edges was whipped in place the hole's ragged edges on
the right side were trimmed of fray, turned under and whipped
to the patch. As the Great Depression deepened, I watched patches
get patches.
Overalls,
faded by many kneelings and many washings, were the hardest to
mend. Patches might get applied to the top of a weakening kneecap,
but snags and cuts got the usual patch treatment. Fingers of hard-working
hands strained to push big needles through the double layers of
tough cloth. Men of all the farms of the community, all the carpenters,
painters, plumbers, wore overalls which were clean and never ragged.
It would have been a disgrace to appear in public with a bare
knee sticking out or a sacrilege to cut off the legs and go around
with frayed edges; actually, an act unheard of. Only the slovenly
families let their men and boys out in dirty unpatched clothes
and nobody wanted to look like the Numananzes.
Sometimes, about halfway through the mending, Aunt Merica would
say that she believed she would go put on some cabbage for supper.
I knew what that would be. The big black, iron skillet would be
filled with shredded cabbage, some fat, some water and a red pepper
pod would be added and brought to boil, then left to simmer until
supper. It turned a dull orange color and was considered by Daddy
to be great food. Mama didn't care for it. Nor did Mama like fried
potatoes with onions. It would take several mentions by Daddy
before that got fixed.
As
with the Monday wash and the Tuesday ironing, the Wednesday mending
drew to a finish by mid or late morning, in time to prepare dinner.
As clothes were put away the talk turned to “what shall
we have for dinner?” and “while I am out in the garden
(or up in the cellar) I will get potatoes for supper.”
Interspersed
with the meal plans was talk about the afternoon’s work,
work that changed with the season.
Sometimes on Wednesday afternoon, Aunt Merica oiled and cleaned
the sewing machine in preparation for the next day’s sewing.
The sewing machine sat in the house, near a window. The hood was
removed and the leaf lifted up and snapped in place. From the
lower right-hand drawer she got out the tiny oil can, the screwdriver
and a rag. I watched her remove the presser foot and the needle,
shake the long skinny bobbin out of its shiny case, and check
the tension screws. Dust and bits of thread got cleared away from
down inside the machine. Oil went in little holes here and there.
The band got looped into its grove on the little right hand wheel
on top of the machine and into the grove on the big wheel near
Aunt Merica's right knee. She and I always felt relief that the
band was still tight enough to make the machine work when Aunt
Merica rocked the pedal back and forth with her foot. If it were
loose and Daddy couldn’t tighten it, all sewing would have
to wait until a new one could be bought on Saturday, and another
wait until Thursday came round again to do sewing.
After
returning the bobbin, the needle, and the foot, she chose a spool
of thread of the number she would use the next day and a scrap
of cloth of the texture of the next day's sewing. The machine
got threaded and a line of stitching was run across the cloth.
Any oil that oozed out of the holes got wiped up with the rag.
Then the stitching was checked for tension and length of stitch.
Sewing on heavy cotton was one thing, but sewing on silk was another.
Voile and batiste might require strips of soft paper under the
cloth. If everything was working fine, we returned the tools to
the drawer, left a piece of cloth under the released presser foot
(to soak up any oil that seeped down during the night), and declared
ourselves ready for Thursday’s sewing.
All
the while my mother was rummaging through the basket of patterns
and leafing through the latest magazine trying to select the pattern
to be used the next day. Some patterns were bought locally; some
were ordered from magazines; some were borrowed from neighbors.
Many were used and re-used, combined and altered.
The
material was ready. It had been bought on Saturday afternoon at
Gammon's, the only store in our town selling everything from dresses
and shoes to pots and pans, mattresses and stoves. Or the material
had come through the mail, ordered after much looking, thinking,
and figuring from the Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogue.
During the hard years, it came from feed sacks, those floral or
geometric printed sacks the feed companies started using so we
depression people could have clothes. The empty sack (how I watched
for the feed to go down and my father watched, wanting it to stay
full) would have been washed on Monday, ironed on Tuesday and
left waiting to be cut and sewed on Thursday.
No
matter from where the cloth had come, nor from whom the pattern
was obtained, two more decisions remained to be made. One was
thread. For most material, thread of the right color and right
number (which indicated the thickness of the thread) had to be
found in the sewing machine drawer or bought at the store. If
the material was silk, then only color mattered. A more momentous
decision was what to trim the dress with. Rickrack, bias tape,
embroidery threads, buttons and laces could all be bought locally
or found in boxes of leftovers from other previous projects. Any
one of these might be used on an everyday dress, but for Sunday
best only lace and buttons were right. Aunt Merica used to press
and then carefully fold the material, tucking the selected trim
and thread inside, and leave it waiting on the hood of the sewing
machine for Thursday morning.
