A chickadee passed along an item about aprons that brought back memories of Mom on the Farm. You know, the good ol? days when mothers did everything that didn’t require a team, tractor or doodlebug.
Moms did fetchin?, hoein?, milkin?, cookin?, pumpin?, laundry, etc.
And they did it all in aprons. During our married life Hazel wore and apron mostly when guests were coming. Frilly things. One is still hanging on our refrigerator through magnetic force.
On the farm, my mother’s apron was not frilly. It would reach past both hips and since my mom was not slim, her apron took a big chunk of cloth. I’m almost sure it was cotton, but it was a heavy cotton. Durable.
My Webster’s says, ‘aprons were usually tied onto the front of the body with strings around the waist and used to protect clothing or adorn a costume.?
With the chicken coop half the length of a football field away it apparently seemed easier to retrieve eggs via her apron than find a bucket that we kids had probably filled with stones, hickory nuts or snowballs for the next defense of our forts.
The strength of an apron over her dress (slacks, shorts and even skirts were never seen on our Mom) made it impossible for a grandchild, puppy, or suckling, persnickety pig to fall through.
I called my mother Ma just once and that was in jest when I was 16 years old. I came down stairs one morning, mother was in the kitchen and I drawled like a Southerner, ‘Mornin? Maw.?
She drawled in kind, ‘Mornin? son.?
She cooked over an iron range with removable plates, reservoir and warming oven high across the back until I was 12 and she was 48.
With immovable, uninspired kids with no ambition to do anything we deemed work, Mom would bring the kindling in for the range in her apron and add a couple larger pieces on top. At least mom didn’t have to carry much of the big stuff because my ol? man was a railroad man. He’d bring coal from the yard that had fallen off coal-cars.
Our garden saw a lot of the ‘apron.? Mom would put a vegetable dinner in that apron: cukes, tomatos, carrots, lettuce, radishes, peas, zucchini, sweetcorn and later even pumpkins, cabbage and squash.
You know what? I don’t remember ever seeing a stain on her apron. I suppose it got a little extra pushing up and down the washboard, but so did my underclothes.
Today we have towels, paper and cloth, handy for wiping. Mother’s apron did all the wiping duties whether it be tears, dust, spills, spots on mirrors, milk moustaches and/or last minute shines when company was coming.
Mother was graduated from Albion College and taught in North Dakota while her boyfriend (my dad) was infantrying in France during WWI, or as he called it ‘The Big War.? (Dad may have had three sons serving in WWII at one time, but WWI was the big war.)
Mother must have learned aproning the old fashioned way, by doing it. Though some credit probably should go to her mother who owned a rooming house in Albion.
Mom could not only use her apron as a pot-holder, she could do it quick as a cat’s wink. On occasion, an ear could be apron-cleaned as we stepped out of the tub on the kitchen floor after our Saturday night bath. Then, too, the drippings on the linoleum joined other soils on the apron.
Hmmm . . . That apron hanging on our refrigerator just took on added meaning. I know I’m going to leave it there now.