The Sentiemental Garment Show

 

Our Life Enrichment Director is really good at listening to our suggestions for cultural or fun events to put on our calendar and one I suggested happened this past week. It was called The Sentimental Garment Show. The idea was for people to bring a garment or a photo of yourself wearing the garment to the activities room for a presentation that explains why it’s sentimental to you. At first I thought the idea was a bust because no one signed up for it the first week it was added to our sign-up apt---yes, another reason it helps to be computer literate in continuum care facilities---so I started talking the idea up at the lunch table, explaining the kinds of things people could bring. It worked and we ended up with twenty-two people bringing items and many of them brought more than one garment.

One of the most interesting garments was a simple, white linen ‘under dress’ that was 100 years old and belonged to the grandmother of my 92 year old upstairs neighbor. Another woman had a jacket from the Olympics. She had been on a ski patrol most of her adult life and when the Olympics were in Salt Lake City the committee invited her to work at it, grooming trails. She said they were provided workers with an entire wardrobe that even included underwear in the Olympic colors and with the three ring logo imprinted on everything. A christening gown was made by another resident and she had a photo album with the twelve babies who wore it. Four wedding dresses appeared---one in a preservation box and the others three on hangers and displayed by a woman who’d been married three times. (She gets teased a lot about having three husbands and is good nature-ed about it.) Two quilts made from shirts of husband’s who’d died (one since moving here) were in the show and I could have brought one of those as well, but didn’t. A ratty old bathrobe was brought down with an explanation that it was the owners go-to comfort robe when she was feeling under the weather. I tried to get some of the guys to bring down one of their ratty old tee shirts that their wives claim they won’t let them throw out but I struck out.

A wonderful wool, winter cape was made by the mother of one of our residents. The workmanship was to die for as was the workmanship on a velvet bridesmaid dress and a ring bear’s outfit made by the mother of another resident. A knitted baby dress was presented and a baby’s quilt and a photograph of a baby’s bassinet with a skirt that was made out of a wedding dress.  Another couple brought a king sized quilt they said was sentimental to them for no other reason than that fact that she made it…somewhat out of place in a garment show but if you knew our Life Enrichment Director you’d understand why she rolls with whatever anyone wants to do. There were two hippy, Flower Child dresses and one of them was mine.

The write-up on my entry read: “If you look closely at the fabric in this dress you’ll see the date 1776 scattered in the print. I made this “Hippie Dress” for our Bicentennial in 1976 and I wore it nearly every weekend through that summer. You may remember that cities and small towns across our nation held patriotic celebrations of all descriptions that entire year and my husband and I went to nearly all of those within driving distance. The photo of me wearing this dress was taken after I signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence that’s in a time capsule in some forgotten town. I was wearing this dress when church bells rang in synchronization across the nation on the Fourth and I wore this dress when I stood along a parade route in a tiny town where half its citizens were in the parade while the other half watched. Celebrating the Bicentennial became a cultural phenomenon that included everything from serving red, white and blue foods at family picnics to building UFO landing pads in several cities as an invitation for space aliens to come help us celebrate. When I downsized to move to Clark I sold off a massive collection of Bicentennial Souvenirs but I couldn’t part with this dress and the nostalgic memories attached to it.”     

Changing topics: Another resident suggested a lecture given by her granddaughter who is a Major in the Air Force and works as a dentist for the military. I go to every lecture, even if I think they’ll be boring or ‘hokey’ and I was surprised at how professional this woman’s presentation was and how interesting the life of a woman career officer was. Duh, I hadn’t realized recruitment was part of her job. Only once was I disappointed in a resident-inspired activity. One couple living here has a granddaughter who sings for the local opera house and while she’s well known and respected around the community the room she sang in here was just too small and about busted my eardrums. I’m not fond of that genre of music to begin with but others who like it had the same complaint, so I won’t be in attendants if she’s invited back again this Christmas. Another family has a daughter and son-in-law who run a dude ranch out west and when they come visit family around Christmas they lead a sing-a-long at are fireplace that make us want to have ‘smores. With all the holiday doings going on around here I might have to add an extra post or two in to the line up.

Until Next Wednesday. ©

Miss Patriotic Me

Over Labor Day weekend, among other things, I sorted two boxes of bicentennial souvenirs that had been in the basement since we moved in and were in an attic before that. Don and I were somewhat naïve about collectibles back in 1976. We thought they'd make us rich in retirement if we kept every single thing we came across that was put out for the 200^th birthday of our nation. And I do mean everything---dry cleaning bags, French fry and hot dog boxes, pencils and pens, marble paper weights, newspapers, plans for planting bicentennial gardens and building floats, Pepsi cans, beer cases, wind chimes, bells, Jim Beans liquor bottles, quilt patterns, paper dolls, flags, White House building kits, pill boxes, dishes and plates. And it goes without saying that we bought every postage stamp and coin set put out by the mint---and there were many. We thought we were 'investing' wisely but what we didn’t factor into the equation is that a lot of other people had the same idea. Bottom line: we wasted our money if you only look at it like an 'investment' gone kaput.  

But, boy did we have fun that year! Don and I were only six years into our relationship at the time and still very much acting like carefree kids even though we were in our 30s. 1976 was a summer filled of bluegrass festivals and going to every bicentennial celebration we could find---and we had a bicentennial guide book to help us find them. We signed copies of the constitution, we put poems in time capsules and we watched parades and fireworks. Every weekend, all summer long was party time. I even had a long, flowing hippy style dress that I made out of white homespun-like fabric that had little liberty bells, dates and flags all over it. I loved wearing that dress! I practically lived in it that year and I still have it hanging in my closet.

As I sat in the garage going through the boxes, my memories of that summer of '76 made me happy and I decided that was my pay-off for saving all that stuff. I hadn’t opened those boxes for 43 years but when the fun of unpacking was over, about a third of it went in the trash because the quality of papers were never meant to be kept that many years. Popcorn bags? What was I thinking? We even had a 43 year old condom with a bicentennial flag on the cellophane. I wasn’t particularly fond of finding that in poor condition because there’s a healthy collectors market for vintage condoms tins. I sold nearly dozen for $25 to $95 each 2-3 years ago. But I was excited when I found the photo at the top of this post. It’s an 8” by 10” and it was taken in a town so small half the people who lived there were in the 4^th of July parade while the other half looked on. People lined up to get our photos taken in front of that flag and we had to wait for them to come in the mail. I wish it showed the pattern in my hippie dress. Still, I love that photo and the eye brows I had back before they turned gray. Heck, I wish I could still fit in that dress. 

About the only thing of any real collector value in our bicentennial stuff is the wooden beer case half the stuff was packed in. It will bring fifty to seventy bucks at the local auction house so I put a few bicentennial dogs inside and am sending them off to sell as one unit. A local newspaper dated July 4th 1976 was sent as a stand-only auction item and I did the same with an unopened 5th of whiskey in a bicentennial decanter. How they get away with selling liquor without a liquor license is a mystery, but it's not the first unopened whiskey bottle I've sold that way. I suspect it's the aged contents, not the collector's edition bottles people are bidding on. A few of the coins got listed on e-Bay and I grouped a big bunch of the bicentennial things together to sell as a junk drawer lot. People who buy junk drawer lots fascinate me. Sometimes they'll e-mail questions about stuff that I have no idea what they are and neither do they, but they end up bidding on the lot anyway. They must be like my husband was. He loved owning unidentifiable objects and would spend whatever time it took to figure out its purpose. Today, with Google images it’s easier but it’s not helping me with any of the mystery items I’ve unearthed while downsizing.

The bicentennial downsizing project took too long but it is what it is. I love that I now have a photograph of me wearing my all-time favorite dress and the photo documents, in a meaningful way, the best summer of my life---the summer I was little Miss Patriotic. I love that it was all but forgotten for four decades so I can look at the image now with fresh eyes and see the artistic quality. The balance and starkness of the blacks and whites is striking, don't you think. And maybe you won't be able to see it in the small image up above but in the 8" x 10" you can see that I'm wearing a Mona Lisa smile and I'm not telling anyone what that smile was all about....  ©

Fourth of July Kisses and Misses

When you’re a septuagenarian the 4th of July comes with many memories. For me those memories usually include bodies of water, family potlucks, small-town or boat parades, fireworks and The Kiss. No one could ever forget their very first kiss if it took place with the whooshes, crackling hisses and booms that come with pops of brilliant colors bursting overhead in the night sky. Oh! My! God! I was fifteen and he was seventeen and when he died nine-ten years ago they had to cut him out of his house because he was so obese. I’m glad that teenage crush burned itself out because I would have hated a life that included cooking for a man who ate himself to death.

How did the crush end? Exactly one year after The Kiss he gave me a line of hickeys that went from my ear all the way down to my cleavage. I was so naïve I didn’t even know what they were until my brother told me I’d better cover those up before our mother saw them. Not an easy thing to do at a lake cottage where we spent half our days in the water, but for the next few days I lived in a flannel shirt and if my mother knew why I was bundled up, she never let on. And thus my very first crush ended. On the next 4th of July when he again came to stay at his friend’s cottage, I was no longer drooling over his beautiful face and taken in by his flattering words. 

 

The year of our bicentennial was another memorable 4th of July. You might remember that year we celebrated the nation’s birthday for the entire summer, not just on the fourth. There were festivals and fairs, synchronized church bells, a flotilla of ships like no other on the Hudson River in Operation Sail, a laser beam via satellite cut a star-spangled ribbon here on earth and a landing pad was built for UFOs to come help us celebrate. Red, white and blue clothing, food and product packaging was everywhere that summer. I even stood in a long line to sign a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was buried in a 100 year time capsule. America’s creativity was in high gear.

 

That was 1976 and Don and I went a little crazy collecting every souvenir we could get our hands on. We were sure saving them for the next fifty years would make us rich. The problem was lots of other people had the same idea and all those special edition postage stamps and coins, glasses, cups, hats, jewelry, newspapers, fast food wrappings, Liberty Bells, quilt patterns and dishes are still in my basement, in a souvenir wooden crate put out by the Anheuser-Busch brewery. My husband didn’t drink but that didn’t stop Don from buying two of those boxes of bicentennial beer, the bottles from which got sold off individually twenty years ago. My all-time favorite bicentennial souvenir, though, is hanging in the back of my closet. It’s a long, loose fitting hippie-style dress with a smocked front that I made out of a light weight “homespun” cream colored fabric with small, 1976 dated flags and fireworks printed all over it. I wore it to every weekend festival, parade and bluegrass jamboree we could find that summer of ’76. Like I said, we went a little overboard and we lapped up all the patriotic theme celebrations within a 100 mile radius. My only regret is that I don’t have a photo of me wearing that dress. It was the best summer of my life. 

 

There were lots of other years when my 4th of July memories all blend into one of two categories: 1) the years when we’d lounge around a lake at either my parent’s cottage or at a cottage with my husband’s family. Food, family and roasting marshmallows over campfires after dark. It doesn’t get much better than that; or 2) the years we’d take off on mini vacations, antique hunting at garage sales and flea markets along Lake Michigan on our way up north. When we’d get there the best part was waking up in a tent pitched in a state park and hearing the waves washing the shore and the seagulls calling us down to the sandy beach. 

 

For my entire life, I’ve claimed the 4th of July as my favorite holiday and I’ve meant it. It represents family, fun, apple pie and patriotism. And now I miss it, the way it used to be. I miss the smell of large bodies of water and fireworks. I miss the family storytellers and jokesters, the ladies who made the best dishes to pass and guys who gave the warmest hugs. I miss how the strangers we met on mini vacations had the time for friendly exchanges. I miss having a president who didn’t embarrass me! I miss the certainty I used to feel that the better, most altruistic side of ourselves and others will always rise to the top and guide our nation down the path our Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, envisioned for us. Hopefully, the checks and balances our constitution promises will kick in with the mid-terms and, like that line of hickeys I got on the Fourth, the current administration’s total lack of credibility and decorum will prove to be an anomaly that will do no permanent damage. ©

 

the beer case, stock photo, mine is in better condition