A Bubble Off Plumb

I have often written about the cool, old stuff I happen across in my travels. This time it is a tattered envelope with colorful sketches on the front. Originally it was priced at 50 cents. I paid half that for an apron pattern from the 1940s.

From the artist’s rendering on the front, these are obviously not your everyday chicken-killing aprons. Trimmed in ruffles and adorned with embroidery and ribbons, they are made for dress up days.

Back then, as I understand it — even I am not that old — it was common to have people over for dinner or drinks or both of an evening. And those occasions would warrant wearing a pretty nice dress, if you were a lady. But just because the roast was for company didn’t mean it wouldn’t leak on your dress front.

So, the dress apron was invented. Fast forward some 80 years and the pattern for a thrifty woman who still wanted to entertain in style is not something anyone uses.

I will probably never use it, either. It is unlikely I will ever even check to see if all the pattern pieces are there. What I loved about it, at least enough to part with a quarter, is the idea.

The idea that at a time in our collective past, our society was gracious enough to concern itself with things like dress aprons. They had to work, but they had to look good, too. It was important.

In today’s throw-away world, people eat dinner — if you want to call it that — while sitting on the couch watching TV. And the food likely comes out of a box or a bag from the drive through.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. I lived that way when I was young and in school, too. But it lacks the glamour and sheer style of those days when ladies wore hats and gloves when they went out, even just to the grocery, and gentlemen dressed in Sunday go-to-meeting clothes if they were traveling, especially on an airplane. Now people wear their pajamas.

It’s not the same, it’s more than a little sad, even if more comfortable, and that feeling is what makes an old apron pattern worth a quarter. And a lot more, too.

Connie Burcham can be reached at Editor@WatongaRepublican.com