Prissy Pinafores and Shiny Shoes

When I was young, people only washed their hair about once a week. The theory was that it would harm hair and dry it out too much if washed more often than that. Odd, isn't it? Of course, there were many ideas back then that would later prove to be misconceptions.

On Saturday, mom would wash my long hair and in the winter, I would lie down in front of the gas firelogs in the living room fireplace and take a nap while my hair dried to the heat of the stove. It was a lovely feeling and one of my strongest memories. I always felt as if I had never slept better than when I was by that gas stove, with its enveloping warmth. I would wrap up in my knitted afghan, the one mom made with fuschia and brown yarn, with tassels all around.

My hair was kept braided all the time, in two pigtails tied with ribbons to match my outfit of the day. Mom sewed almost all my clothing until I was about 10, after which I decided "store-bought" was much preferable to "mommy-made". How wrong I was! She made pretty cotton dresses, with puffy sleeves and rick rack or lace trim, and organdy pinafores to match. A pinafore was a sort of decorative apron, used to catch whatever soil I came in contact with during the day, and thus save the dress from getting dirty. In her theory, I could wear the dress with the pinafore and then another day without it, and have 2 different looks. In practice, I hardly ever got dirty. I could have worn the same dress 5 days in a row and it would still look as fresh as it did the first day. I finally learned to get a little dirty, so that I wouldn't have to wear the same dress 2-3 days in a row!

My school shoes were black patent Mary Janes, polished to a high gloss with petroleum jelly; I wore them with white socks, sometimes trimmed in lace. Can you imagine the girls of today going to school dressed like that? I enjoyed looking like a princess, but of course it had its bad points. If we girls got on a swing, the boys were always watching to see if the skirts would fly up over our faces so they could yell...."I see England, I see France, I see Judy's underpants". I learned quickly to tuck my skirt under my legs so it wouldn't fly up. Forget trying to climb on a jungle-gym in a dress without showing everything - but we did it anyway - mostly when the boys were off playing ball or marbles or jacks. Somewhere I have a photo of some classmates perched on the jungle-gym at school when we were in the fifth grade. Good times......warm memories......and what I am learning through these reveries is that it was a very good childhood.