Today
was Sunday – church day – but the minister would not be here. Instead, those
who attended the little Methodist Church at the cemetery some 2 ½ miles distant
would gather for Sunday school. Weather permitting, the minister would come the
Sunday before Christmas.
Before
church, Ina prepared a nice pot roast of beef with vegetables from last
summer’s garden – potatoes, carrots, turnips, and onions. It would be ready for
an early afternoon dinner. There would be four for dinner including Shirley’s beau
Henry.
Ina
liked Henry well enough. He was polite, well-spoken, and helpful, and she was
glad that Shirley had someone to take her around. But -- he was poor as a
church mouse. Like many young couples during this Depression, Shirley and Henry
were trapped – needed at home and unable to strike out on their own.
While
Ina and Shirley did the dishes, Henry helped Jack with the afternoon chores and
then left to help his father at home. After the dishes were done, Shirley
suggested they work on their Christmas gifts. While Shirley embroidered on the
dresser scarf she was making for Aunt Bertha, Ina stuffed the doll with cotton.
As the pattern showed, she stitched across the doll’s knees and hips to make
joints, but she was chagrined to discover that the stuffing was too tight for
the doll to bend her knees and hips anyway.
“That’s
the trouble,” grumbled Ina, as she and Shirley assessed the doll. “One learns
as one goes along. I could do better
next time, but there may be no next time.”
At
the end of sewing session, the doll was stuffed and her opening closed by hand.
In the evening, Jack, Ina, and Shirley sat near the radio in the dining room to
listen to programs. Radio reception was clearer at night, you know. Shirley
fiddled with the dial on the old battery-operated radio, tuning in a station
out of Portland. KW
[Since
I couldn’t find a cotton roll such as we used to buy at the drug store – at
least not affordably – I stuffed my rag doll with Fiberfill by EcoCraft, an
eco-friendly product made from corn.]
2 comments:
I for one am thankful for the wonderful stuffing materials we have now! (I also started a paragraph about today's generation who think they have it so tough, but decided I'd better not...)
Hi Chris! I start that paragraph all the time and then abandon it. Somehow that observation just doesn't go down on paper well. Besides, I wasn't there, so I don't really know. It seems to me, though, that young people as a rule matured earlier and were less self-centered. They even looked more mature as they graduated from high school. Of course, the family farm was built on the premise that everyone carried his own weight, and that concept was carried into community life.
When I worked at the museum, one of our volunteers related that she and her husband-to-be carried on a long-distance romance for ten years, fully expecting to marry one day. I commented that that was a long time to defer married life. She replied simply, "There were things to be done."
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