FRIVOLOUS FRIDAY: HANKIES

When I was a little girl in the ‘50s, women still carried handkerchiefs, or hankies. I’m sure the popularity of hankies amongst younger women was waning somewhat in favor of more sanitary disposable tissue, but hankies could still be found in the marketplace and older women certainly carried them and probably considered them a sign of gentility. I well remember a hankie being pulled from a pocketbook or clutched in the palm of a hand.

Even when I was a young adult, displays of beautiful handkerchiefs were still found in department stores and women’s specialty shops.  Occasionally a woman might treat herself to a new handkerchief, and the gift of a handkerchief was a rather classy yet inexpensive way to remember someone. A “handkerchief shower” might be given to honor a woman, perhaps as she was leaving the community for a new home, for example. Each guest would bring a handkerchief – some in flat boxes called folders and some enclosed in cards – to be opened by the honoree. 

I happen to have a lot of handkerchiefs. A conservative estimate is fifty – and that doesn’t count Grandma Ina’s fifteen. After 40 years of ignoring them, I was recently inspired to locate and spread them out on a bed, and I have to admit that though some of them seemed familiar, I couldn’t remember anything about them. I expect I dismissed hankies as useless. “It’s just a keepsake,” I can hear my mother saying. “Just tuck it in your drawer; it doesn’t take up any space. It was so thoughtful of ‘so-and-so’ to remember you.”

Thankfully, some of the hankies were identified. I found three with “Grandma Portfors” written on little slips of paper carefully tucked in a fold. A few other hankies were identified in like manner. One, still in wrapping paper, carried the message, “For Kathy upon Nina’s initiation into Eastern Star, from Una.” And I remembered how unhappy I had been because Nina received many hankies on that occasion and I didn’t understand why she should be so honored. Perhaps the hankie came from Una’s purse to placate a five-year-old Kathy.

The only handkerchief I really remembered was a beautiful lace number with beading. Taking another trip down memory lane, I recalled how my friend Marcia bought me that beautiful handkerchief one evening as we were shopping (about 1973). I tried to dissuade her, but she loved handkerchiefs and insisted I should have one. The saleslady pulled hankies from the glass case at Marcia’s request, much as you’d ask to see items at a jewelry counter. That handkerchief is now the only one I really remember. 

Handkerchiefs gradually faded from the scene, and I know something about that, too. When I was pregnant with my first baby in 1977, Bennie, my mother-in-law, sent me a baby bonnet she had fashioned out of a lacy off-white handkerchief. It came with a little poem about how the baby would wear the bonnet home from the hospital. If the baby was a girl, she would carry the hankie on her wedding day, and if the baby was a boy, he would give the hankie to his bride to carry on their wedding day.

In 1979, as I was having my second child, here came another little bonnet with the same poem enclosed. Clearly, this baby was to be blessed with his own bonnet.

In 1981, before Hallie was born, Bennie asked what she could do for the baby, and I mentioned the handkerchief bonnet. She gave me a dubious look, and I thought perhaps I had overstepped my bounds, but she didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but before the baby was born, her special bonnet from Grandma Bennie arrived. Sometime later, Bennie explained that it had been difficult to find a hankie for the 1979 bonnet and in 1981, it had been all but impossible. The store where she bought handkerchiefs had discontinued them, she said. She had asked here and there until she found one that would do.

So, this is my own little history of handkerchiefs. Do you have handkerchiefs? And if you do, do you think we should treasure them as they are, or do you think we should find ways to use them?

[Photo 1: I no longer remember how most of these handkerchiefs came into my collection. The grouping of dark ones are men's dress handkerchiefs that belonged to my dad. The bucking horse with bright yellow edge is a scarf -- maybe a bandana -- commemorating the Pendleton (Oregon) Rodeo. It has a quarter inch hole in the middle. 

Photo 2: Children had hankies, too, and this photo includes some of my children's storybook or character designs.

Photo 3: This photo focuses on a few of my least favorites. The reason I separated those out will be the subject of another post.

Photo 4: Ina's collection of hankies. One with wide lace edging is well worn, obviously a favorite. Others seem new. Ina passed away in 1957, and the fact that these remained in the house indicates a waning interest in hankies at that time.
Photo 5 is Baby Hallie's hospital portrait. She's wearing the handkerchief bonnet that her Grandma Bennie made for her.]