Lee Smith is one of my favorite Southern writers. I just bought her memoir and can’t wait to start reading it. I love her writing, I love memoirs, I love the South. So I know it will be a treasured experience to read her story. More than that, the title suggests that I might identify with some of her experiences.
My first job as a teenager was in a dimestore. Oh, I had earned money at home for various special chores. Like Truman Capote, I picked up pecans in the fall of the year. (Some grammarians would rather read that I gathered pecans, but that’s not what we said in Sycamore. Furthermore, as you read it, think pea-cans, to get the sound of the word right in your mind.) If you’ve ever read his “A Christmas Memory,” you can get an idea of the experience of fruitcake baking that took place at our house. I even had a spinster aunt to guide me as Capote did.
And, there was a day picking cotton (probably a couple of hours) at Uncle Hal’s field, and a day in the tobacco barn (also Uncle Hal’s). My Daddy had given up farming for building by the time I was born, but he realized the experience of field labor would be soon forgotten and that I should have those memories. He was right on both counts. Of course.
Oh, my job at the dimestore.
The year I turned fifteen, I was eligible to get a work permit and get a job. My mother took me to the school superintendent’s office to complete the appropriate paperwork. I recall Mr. Royal counseling me that, “this should not interfere with your schoolwork, of course.” Well, of course; it wouldn’t. I was the class nerd before nerd was a word. Nothing came before my schoolwork.
But now I was legal. On Saturdays, I reported to Elrod’s Five and Dime on Main Street in Ashburn. I guess I worked from 9:00 until 5:00, I don’t recall the exact hours. I do recall the pay. It was $5.00 and change. Literally. Cash. In a small manila envelope.
There were three of us teenagers working; the manager, and another adult full-time employee. Carl lifted all the heavy boxes, swept the oiled wood floors with sweeping compound, and helped with serving customers. Carolyn and I offered assistance to customers, kept shelves filled with reserves from beneath the old wooden counters, and watched for shoplifters.
Saturday was a busy day; there wasn’t much time for small talk, But, in the quiet times, I learned to bond with co-workers. We did not know each other so had nothing in common other than this experience. We learned from our customers, too. A wide range of society came through those doors, and the dimestore sold everything from toys to tools. There were clothing items for children and underwear for adults. The first time a customer asked for “step-ins,” I replied that we didn’t carry those. Carolyn had to translate for me. Oh. I taught her the difference in a wrench and screwdriver.
We sold bulk candy, learning to scoop from the bins and weigh on a scale now sold in antique stores. We mixed the sticky syrup that went into making “slushies” when they were new. Dare I say that we did not wash our hands frequently, and there were no plastic gloves? It was a simpler time.
We wrapped Christmas packages with the stern manager watching over our shoulder to ensure that the paper didn’t overlap too much and that we didn’t use too much scotch tape. The paper was quite thin, and tearing it was wasteful, too, so we learned to be fast and careful and frugal. There were no boxes or gift bags, so some oddly shaped packages required some creative thinking. The paper curling ribbon was final flourish. Today, even though I have wired ribbon on hand to decorate my packages, I keep some paper curling ribbon on hand.
I worked at Elrod’s on Saturdays, some weekdays in the summer, and during Christmas holidays for the last three years of high school. In the last year, the business relocated to a more modern building. I guess it was more comfortable; being air-conditioned and having slick tile floors. But it never seemed the same. The old building, the theatre next door, and the railroad track across the street were all part of the ambiance. That theatre sold the world’s greatest french fries. To this day, if I am served extraordinarily good, greasy, salty fries made from freshly sliced potatoes, I remember the ones Carl would go get for all of us at mealtime.
Now I guess it’s time to travel down Lee Smith’s memory lane with her Dimestore.
Photo: If Carl, Carolyn, and I were working teens these days, we would have numerous group selfies, I’m sure. But the best I can do here is a blurry scanned image of myself during those years. Yes, I made the dress.
This photo is one I made a few years ago to use on the invitations to my family reunion. Pictured are a platter and pitcher from the Tea Leaf dinnerware which was my grandmother’s pattern. On the evening of Ollie Jane’s wedding in 1890, her mother hosted a supper for family. She served the meal on those dishes and gave them as a gift to the bride and groom. These two pieces in the photo were later purchases, but I do have one plate left that was on Ollie Jane’s table that night. The large pitcher was one she used and I still use it, too.
Happy Fourth of July from Bunk Bates. I don’t know who Bunk is, or even if he is a he or a she. But this photo has been a part of my life for as long as I can recall. It was in my Great Aunt Nellie’s photo album. The name “Bunk Bates” was scrawled across the bottom.
idered 48 French knots to represent stars, added some free motion quilting, and layered it atop a piece of an old quilt. I guess it represents my freedom from all the rules of quilting, because I followed few of them.
Watching some YouTube videos on the art of photography led me down a rabbit hole. I’ve fallen into the world of street photography, past and present.
In the 1930’s, ‘40’s and maybe into the ’50’s, studio photographers could be found snapping photos of people on city streets. I wondered if there was some forerunner of Polaroids that allowed instant printing of the image, but a bit of research said that was not the case. These photographers were sometimes hired by big department stores, but more often were from local portrait studios. The candids were taken and a business card was given to the subject. The hope was that a visit to the studio to collect the photo would result in more portrait appointments.
I am thoroughly intrigued by the notion of both kinds of street photography. Just what I need; another hobby. But, the memories of the old images we have led to the discovery of some newer ones we have made already and I’m already incorporating one into an art quilt. Oh, my, what have I started?
Eating lunch at a local restaurant, I couldn’t help but imagine the story behind the man sitting behind my husband.
My Daddy was a church-going man; an old-line, foot-washing Primitive Baptist. Most Sundays (and some Saturdays) were spent going to one of the churches in our regular rotation. Each church held services only one weekend per month, having a service and conference on Saturday, just worship on Sunday.
As I approached my fourth birthday, I was looking forward to kindergarten at Miss Emily’s little red schoolhouse. My only sister was 19 years old and away at college, so I didn’t have playmates of my age around all the time. My mother recounted hearing me ‘talking to myself’ while playing alone on the front porch of our house. It seems I was describing the fun I would have with other children at this fantasy land. According to my mother, I included an outhouse as part of my description. She was amused and horrified that I added that detail.
In February, I was quite busy with several demanding projects. Some of them kept me occupied at the computer, others at the sewing machine, preparing for our guild’s imminent quilt show. What I needed was some hand stitching to soothe my rattled nerves.
I found three colors I liked, chose a solid fabric for the background, and stitched them over a few evenings in front of the television. Recently, I layered the top with Dream Wool batting and a piece of hand-dyed fabric from Wendy Richardson as the back. I outlined the appliqué and stitched several rows of echo quilting using a variegated thread. The various edge designs; pebbles, straight lines, and continuous curves were stitched using a neutral color thread of the same weight.
This whole project was based on revisiting something I had liked from an earlier quilt. Four Little Pitchers was my entry in our guild’s annual challenge in 2009. The challenge was to make a four-block quilt. I drew the shapes of the pitchers based on some pieces from my pottery collection, used needleturn appliqué to stitch them to the black background, and separated the four blocks with a tiny (1/4”), subtle sashing of black with silver dots. Then I appliquéd the vine using the pattern from Emily Senuta’s basket book, and continued the design with the quilting motif. In that case, I continued the vine in green, then echoed all with a black thread.
The sashing turned out to be so tiny and so subtle that it became invisible, but I always liked the result of the vine motif and wanted to work with that design again. Especially after I began using wool batting, I wanted to use it to give extra dimension to the leaves in the quilted vines. The vine in the latest project is twice the size of the original pattern.
There is something soothing about the pulling of thread through cloth. I find myself out of sorts if days (okay, even one day) go by without some time spent stitching.
The top photo is one of me working on Blocks in Blue while staying at the Inn at Iris Meadows in Waynesville, NC. That quilt was hand pieced and machine quilted in 2005. It finished at 27” square, and was one of my early attempts at free motion machine quilting. I used invisible nylon thread in the top, a matching cotton thread in the bobbin.
Today I find myself doing two things I thought I wasn’t doing anymore. Prewashing fabric, and dyeing fabric.
And, last week I stitched the wool piece you see here from a Maggie Bonanomi 
So, I had some blackberries we weren’t eating as fast as we should, I boiled them with some water in the microwave, and added some fabrics. If you think you see bits of berries in the bowl, you are right. I’m hoping for a mottled effect.