Missouri Haberdashers

President Harry Truman was a Missouri haberdasher in the beginning, selling men’s clothing. You don’t see many clothing stores devoted entirely to dressing men anymore. I remember a store named Litwin’s in the next Kansas town south. While it sold ladies clothing too, its long suit was menswear. Walking through the store’s front door, a customer inhaled masculine smells of tweed, wool, and leather.

The new Southern Lady magazine has a short article on two women who have become successful at men’s haberdashery. They started by making ties, ties with Southern motifs and character. The article brought up an old memory I had not thought about in years-my own practice of tie-making.

It was the 1970’s and DH worked at McDonnell Douglas as a designer. He had to wear a dress shirt and tie everyday. My friend in the apartment next door had made her hubby a tie using a pattern from a fabric store, and she shared it with me so I could sew my new hubby one too. I was looking for a teaching job, but Language Arts teachers were a dime a dozen then, and I had a few months with a lot of time on my hands. She and I fossicked for fabrics finding wild, new patterns and hues not meant for men’s ties until we created and stitched up our handmade neckwear. When DH wore his to work, the other men commented on the colors. One day a man offered to buy his tie and DH, never one to turn down a money-maker, pulled it off his neck and came home that night with cash in hand. He soon began to carry a few choices to work each day for Show and Sell at coffee breaks. Eventually, a few men ordered specific colors and fabrics, but most just bought their choices from the “traveling tie salesman”.

My claim to fame as a fashion designer was short lived. When we left St Louis for a job in the southwestern corner of Missouri, only 30 minutes from old Harry’s hometown of Lamar, DH’s new employer did not require anything in dress beyond causal. Times were changing and so were ties. But somewhere in the back of St. Louis closets today (or in a local thrift shop!) there are some of my handmade ties lingering.

Tea Cup Tuesday, #18

This week it is bathroom teacups! No, not everyone has a bathroom decorated with tea cups,  and no, I don’t brew or serve tea there. But the guest bathroom makes a nice place for some extra cups and saucers to rest.

This tea cup a friend found at her church rummage sale for me. It has a nice silver handle and very round, shallow bowl. It says Made in Japan.

The bottom cup was a new gift from one of my book club members. I was dealing with some difficult issues, and she brought tea and tea cup to remind me not to steep in my worries. It is a lovely shade of blue and with such beautiful birds. This sweet little bird sits nearby and seems to go with the cup.

This cup and saucer are marked Windsor Ware from Johnson Bros, Made in England. About ten years ago, DH was sent to Windsor, Canada to work for six months. He entertained himself on the weekends by taking drives or bike rides across the countryside. The Windsor area was beautiful, and I got to visit a couple of times. One Saturday he was driving around and saw an elderly woman having a small rummage sale on her lawn. He stopped and poked around. Although the cup did not look like something I would choose, she only wanted $2 for it, and he thought it interesting. I agreed when I saw it and have enjoyed having the touch of brown added to my cache.

In this same bathroom, there is one tea pot. This was a birthday gift from a group of friends. It is a lovely pot, so spring-like and holds a large quantity of tea. It is a little difficult to brew in unless each cup is poured through a strainer. It is best to brew the tea elsewhere and decant to this one for serving. I do not use it a lot for tea, but do enjoy its beauty.

Is Writing Dangerous to Your Health?

Do you ever think too much about writing, about your stories? Do you ever forget what you’re doing and become lost in your imaginary world? Are you ever driving a car and forget where you are going and that YOU are the one at the wheel? Is thinking about scenes while driving as dangerous as texting while driving?


I have to be careful and not read Jenny’s Saturday Centus until after I have been for groceries or made a dash to the farmer’s market. Because if I am not careful, I am pinching the rutabagas while looking for the right word to describe the moment of passionate embrace and moaning in vicarious pleasure while iother shoppers look on. Or I plan some murderous deed, gripping the van steering wheel in a death grip, and do not realize the bumper up ahead is just that-- a mere bumper and not a target to annihilate.


I remember reading that May Sarton often left a poem on her desk unfinished for months at a time while looking for the right word. Sometimes I wiggle sentences and juggle words in my poems too. I know the poem is almost stand alone but has some ragged edges yet. I realize that something needs to be honed a bit, sharpened like a kitchen knife that cuts a banana but won’t slice a tomato clean and precise. So I mull over words, sticking them in and taking them out, trying to find just the right one. It is like having a ring of keys in your hand and knowing one will fit the lock if you can just find it.


Teachers are multi-taskers and women are jugglers, always having several balls in the air at once. So I often tried doing household tasks between running trips to the computer. Put a load of laundry in, write a line; brown those chops, stick them in the oven, and return to writing a love scene; dash off two more paragraphs and then remake the bed with clean linens. It usually works well but can lead to disaster. I was writing one day when sounds of gunfire echoed through the house. I thought, “Oh, the dastardly criminals are loose again.” But wait a minute, there are no guns in my story! Bam, another pop and then I sniffed a sulfur smell. Eggs! I was boiling eggs!


I went to the kitchen to find the eggs had boiled dry of any water, gotten hotter and hotter with no attention, and were in the process of exploding all over my kitchen. Yes, I had set a timer, but its gentle ding was lost somewhere in the 1800’s as pioneer woman tried to parley with a Comanche for the safety of her daughter.


A cell phone can be put in my purse; a computer can be put in sleep mode. But my mind, what there is left of it, is hard to turn off. It races on all the time, getting nowhere really. So if you hear of a hit and run accident on your police scanner, it might be me tooling down the street thinking the fender I just hit was a log in river while I was padding for Lewis and Clark. Then again, I have been known to step off the curb in front of traffic while my head was in the clouds. Writing can be hazardous to my heath!

Saturday Centus #8

Want a way to practice writing scenes? Tightening lines? Come write with Jenny’s writing promt. Each linked essay must be 100 words or less, not including the "prompt" words. The prompt words can be used in any place within your story but must be left intact. To do Saturday Centus, use Jenny Matlock’s writing prompt found at http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com/2010/06/saturday-centus-week-7.html

Prompt:“Did you notice Elizabeth in class this morning and how forlorn she seemed?"


Perhaps I will write her a comforting note, I thought.
 
 
Getting an Education
I studied her in the lecture hall. French roll pinned perfectly, eyes attentive to professor, the filigree E on her matching cardigan plummeting down to her pert breast points. But I knew her fingers meditating the single stand of pearls were remembering last night at the lake with animal-like frat boys.



“Did you notice Elizabeth in class this morning and how forlorn she seemed?"


Perhaps I will write her a comforting note, I thought. After all, no one needed an education like she got last night.


“Oh, probably just listening to old Dinmore on the Greeks. That’s enough to make anyone look pitiful,” I turned the topic while I watched Elizabeth amble across the oval, her books clutched close to her chest.

A June Tea Party

One thing that gave me a lot of pleasure was giving a tea party on my deck. My friends would come early in the morning and stay until nearly noon. We drank tea, tasted goodies, and yes even gossiped in the under the shade trees. In the winter I continued the tradition indoors, making changes from iced tea to hot tea, from frosty glasses to warm cups. At Christmas I traded in gift buying for gift giving by choosing to give my friends one evening with a meal they could come to and simply sit down at the table for the evening. I did it all because that was my gift---a true evening out away from families, dishes, and even having to take a dish. One year they found a collection of Mary Englebright tea pot ornaments and made a tea wreath for me. Everyone picked out a different ornament and wrote their name on the bottom. After twelve years, it begins to show signs of wear.

Eventually, as I went to work and children required more time too, they insisted on bringing something so we turned it into Christmas pot luck for just us gals. We always had a great time and it was something we all looked forward to during the holiday season. The year my dad died, I just did not have the heart to be as festive but the real issue was energy. Somehow the Christmas dinner went by the wayside, as it was a year I began working more hours too.

Our lives just got more complicated, making it harder and harder to arrange for our fun get togethers. Everyone has jobs or retired husbands to work around. Diets are now sugar free, cholesterol free, fat free, nut free, caffeine limited, or some restriction making food choices for a menu a challenge. Grown children need help or grandbabies need rocking. Cancer, heart attacks, death, aging parents and just plain old exhaustion add more complications to the mix. But despite all of the above and the horrible heat this year, I decided to have a tea party…well, a limited version of one. Due to the heat, I called for it to start an hour earlier than usual so we could end before the sun found us on the west side of the house. I limited the menu to simple cookies and tea only: no finger sandwiches, nuts, rolls, mints, chocolates, or decorated cut outs. We would concentrate on tea and talk.

And that is what we did this morning. Everyone truly enjoyed the tea party under the trees. We ate lavender, chocolate chip, and oatmeal cookies, carrot muffins, and spread fresly made plum jam on shortbread. It was a toss up which tea was the favorite between cinammon orange, ginger peach and a tropical of passionfruit and papaya. Such laughter and cackling floated through the neighborhood! The birds chirped, the water fountain tingled, ice rattled in the glasses, but no sound was more pleasant than the laughter of my friends. We talked, joked and remembered; we missed those who had moved away.

After a couple of hours or so, the heat increased and real world obligations pricked our minds. We lingered a bit in our good-byes, lamented having to end the party, and vowed to not let too much time pass before for we did it again soon.

Nice Day in June

     A garden in St. Louis...my friend's garden is a cool and green retreat in June.

A front came through last night and dropped today’s temperatures from 95 to 90; it has been some relief. Who would have thought 90 would feel cool? But it has been a summer kind of day I like with a delicious meal at home. Nothing is better than sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, green peppers, and cantaloupe, all grown locally. I like a dash of cottage cheese with my slicers; cucumbers are hardly ever better than when sliced with onions and marinated in vinegar brine heavily laced with salt and pepper!



The only dent in the day is the crowd of flies that lingers around our ankles and hover at the door waiting for a chance to come in and speckle walls and windows! They were bad yesterday, and I thought maybe the front moving through would take them along east. However, the pesky things are still here so it must have something to do with the humidity.


Today’s blog at Susan’s Blackberry Cottage (http://blackberryjamcafe.blogspot.com/2010/06/simple-pleasures-thursday-vintage.html) shows some wonderful textiles and comments on a simpler way of living. It suited my mood just right today. Seems I am growing old, tending to remember the “olden days”. I know those days were far from perfect, but they made some nice memories. I remember days helping my mother by hanging over a hot ironing board pressing those textiles to starched perfection in the blow of an oscillating fan! No AC then! One thing we did not iron was bed sheets. My Granny always ironed those bed linens every week; boy, am I glad my Mom didn’t take up that tradition!

Lots of Mish Mash

Summertime and the living is easy….well, it could be if it were cooler. This morning I was mowing again at 6:30 am. It was cooler then but still a steamy job. Our heat index at bedtime last night was 88. Too hot to mow then even if I wanted to mow with a flashlight! So it was a early work call this morning. DH washed and cleaned cars under the shade trees later before sitting down to cool off. Relative term since the air was hot anyway. This afternoon we escaped inside to air conditioning.

A few years ago my sister-in-law gave me these great work gloves, Atlas. They help while mowing and everything else. They are far from worn out, but I was distressed this morning to find wear showing up! The gloves are like the flowers... and the glove-wearer, distressed and worn!

Hens and chicks do well in hot and dry scenarios. They also make it through freezing cold winters. But suddenly three of my hens grew up and are flowering! I have never seen this. They must be 8 inches tall, enough they are leaning over now. The blooms are not pretty, look like little brown straw flowers in a bunch. All the rest have remained small and normal looking, but they are overshadowed by these monster growths!

Forty four years ago today DH and I had our first date. Wow, what a number! We went to see Mary Poppins, NOT his kind of movie, but that just shows how eager he was to please in those days. If only he were HALF that eager now to just pick up his own socks!

Oh my, what a mish mash of nothing this post is. Must be the heat; it fries all the good ideas!