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“Everyone has an apron story,” says EllynAnne Geisel, an apron archaeologist whose collection and related research are on display in “Apron Memories,” an ongoing exhibit at Doylestown’s Mercer Museum.
But is she right? I asked Morning Call readers to share their apron memories and waited for their responses.
The results have been amazing. Dozens of heartwarming stories poured in, like cider in autumn. Apron strings truly are ties linking us to happy memories of the beloved women and men who wore them.
As I read through readers’ letters and emails and studied family photos accompanying them, I realized aprons are much more than utilitarian garments protecting clothing from flying flour dust and spattering grease. Some even have magical qualities, like bottomless pockets and the ability to wipe away tears.
Take a break from baking pumpkin pies, making stuffing and assembling your green bean casserole to read the stories told by your friends and neighbors. It will be a delicious experience that will get you pumped up for Thanksgiving’s kick-off of the heavy-duty holiday cooking season.
Because readers sent so many grand stories, we’re dishing them up in two batches. You’ll get a hearty serving of apron tales here today and again next week. In addition, anyone who hungers for more can find additional tales on themorningcall.com now and again next week.
Gotta get back to work? Peeling potatoes and cubing slices of bread will go easier when you realize you’re not just preparing a big meal. You’re making memories for the people who love you. Maybe you should even put on an apron.
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Mom’s magic apron pockets
We honestly didn’t know how poor we were until we were all grown up and out into the world, and discovered that other kids didn’t sleep three to a bed and five to a bedroom, and when their families ate steak, each member of the family got a whole steak for themselves instead of one steak for the whole family!
One reason we remained so ignorant for so long about our poverty was because of my mother’s aprons, specifically her apron pockets. They were amazing.
Our Mom’s aprons were always the same style: no-nonsense, no-frills pinafores with wide straps that crossed in the back and had one, maybe two pockets. In each pocket would be a clean cotton handkerchief, maybe a piece she had swiped from a jigsaw puzzle so she could save the day by “finding” the last piece, maybe a some hard candy from her Christmas stash, but always a few dollars – a few bills and a scattering of nickels, dimes and pennies.
Each week, Pop would bring his pay envelope home and together they would parcel out the money. Any extra dollars went into Mom’s apron pockets and mingled with money she earned by taking in laundry or selling homemade Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls with red hearts hand-stitched with “I Love You.”
Mom wore those aprons all day, every day except when she went to church on Sundays. When Mom put her apron on, she was all business. It was time to work.
Occasionally she would run out of flour or needed another spool of thread to finish a project. No problem. She would just reach into those apron pockets and find exactly enough money to send us running off to the neighborhood grocery store. In her magic apron pockets, there was always a nickel for ice cream when we were kids and $5 for gas when we were in college. Her bank was never closed. Her pockets were bottomless.
When she died at age 88, we haggled over only one thing: who inherits her aprons and thereby gets custody of those pockets.
Didn’t matter. There really was nothing in them. Everything she ever gave us came straight from her heart.
–Fern Louise Mann, Coopersburg
Mammy used apron to carry eggs, vegetables
I’ve included a picture of my grandmother wearing an apron. The picture was taken in 1984 and she passed away in 1994, at age 88.
“Mammy” (Eva Haydt) as her 30-plus grandchildren called her, was a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer’s wife who spent much of her life in the kitchen. My mom is Mammy’s daughter, and our family of my two sisters, mom, dad and me lived only one half mile from the family farm. In our younger years, we saw our grandmother almost every day after school and every week day in the summer as she “watched” us when our parents worked.
She wore an apron with a big bow in the back over her dresses every day. (Mammy did not wear pants!) In the summer, she wore her apron to pick the garden vegetables. Many times she carried the vegetables gathered in her apron. She canned every type of fruit and vegetable that was grown on the farm. She would lift the hot jars out of the canner with the bottom edge of her apron.
My grandparents raised chickens as part of their farm and Mammy collected up to 300 eggs per day. I can still see her coming out of the chicken house holding the bottom of her apron full of eggs – I think sometimes she had as many as three dozen eggs in her apron.
Mammy had a real green thumb and grew beautiful flowers. Most of her aprons were made of flower printed fabric. I remember as I was a young adult seeing her next to her flowers and thinking how beautiful she looked in her faded flower-printed apron next to her flowers.
In addition Mammy baked at least three times a week, and not just one pie or cake, but six or seven at a time. I remember seeing her with flour on her apron on baking mornings. She would go out the kitchen door after baking and shake the bottom of her apron.
Most importantly, when she held her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her aprons wiped many tears, sticky mouths and hands. Sometimes they provided that extra bit of warmth for a newborn.
I do not remember any single special apron my Mammy wore; instead I remember the many aprons she wore and all of the hard work and love the aprons shared as she wore them.
–Rose Kwolek, Coplay
A bridal-shower apron
Forty-five years ago, a group of my mother’s friends had a small bridal shower for me. Before the shower, each guest was given a 5-inch square of blue fabric on which to embroider something memorable.
These squares were gathered at the shower and then put on a homemade apron. I’ll always remember that shower and in particular the lovely ladies who hosted it.
–Eileen Kozo
Handy-dandy pockets
My earliest recollection of an apron goes back 60-some years ago when I was about 4 or 5 years old. This was an apron that I wore at the kitchen table. It was handmade, red and lime green with embroidery on it. It tied around my neck and it had big pockets all along the hem line. It indeed was an apron that my Mother put on me … kind of like a bib. One day Mother had made chili con carne. She placed a big bowl of this stuff in front of me. I was a very finicky eater. It was chock full of these oval red beans. I asked, “What are those things?” and Mother told me they were, KIDNEY beans! I was pretty smart for my age and I knew that urine came from kidneys and I wasn’t about to EAT those things! Mother made me sit there for what seemed like hours til the chili was gone, including the beans! Like I said, I was smart and I figured out that those big pockets along the hemline had to be good for something. Yup, those pockets sure came in handy. I hand-picked every one of those beans out of the chili and deposited them into those handy-dandy pockets!
By the way, I have since learned that those beans are named kidney because of their shape, not because of what they excrete. Today, I make delicious chili myself and I even put kidney beans in it!
–Karen Newhard, South Whitehall Township
A special gift
In 1952, when I was 8, we lived in the small village of Line Lexington, Bucks County.
Everyone in town knew everyone else, and we all walked to our post office which was in the postmaster’s home to get our mail and visit with our neighbors. We lived next door to the post office.
My mother was a nurse and worked the night shift, and that meant she slept during the day and I was on my own. As a lonely little girl, I sought out the postmaster’s wife. She had a cozy farm kitchen with something always cooking or baking and a sewing machine set up on the table.
Years later I wondered where she got the material, because no one had any extra money back then. But she had a piece of batiste that was the most beautiful cloth I had ever seen. It was sheer, shiny and crisp to the touch.
She was my guardian angel that summer because she helped me make an apron for my mother out of that material. We decorated it with ribbons and starched and pressed it. I was in heaven.
Everyone in those days wore an apron. You didn’t even start cooking before putting on your apron.
Making that apron changed my whole life. We didn’t have any money for me to buy material, but we raised chickens and had feed bags. I used my grandmother’s treadle sewing machine and I made doll clothes out of feed bags and graduated to making my own clothes. I majored in Home Ec in college and have continued to sew my own clothes and clothes for others, to make quilts and do my whole family’s mending.
My mother never said much about the apron. She was never much interested in housework. But as a shy, lonely little girl, that neighbor’s generosity has lived on through me as I made this beautiful creation.
–Jeanne Hunsberger, Pennsburg
Take-along apron
I always take along an apron that belonged to my mother with me every year when we vacation in Maine. Joseph, my son-in-law, wears it and does his “duty” with the turkey during our annual Thanksgiving dinner in July. He never objects and always does a great job.
-Edna Strobel, Allentown
Passing it on for generations
Apron-wearing is a family tradition, started by my husband’s grandmother and grandfather, Harry and Mabel Roberts. Mabel always had an apron on and her husband was a carpenter by trade so he wore a carpenter’s apron.
Florence, their daughter, married Robert Waterman, who was a farmer. Farmers’ wives always wore aprons and she was no exception. Whenever we went to their house, she had an apron on, even on special occasions.
My husband, Harry, and I own a meat shop in Hereford, so the tradition kept going. All butchers need to wear an apron and even I got hooked. I never realized how important an apron is and that Mabel and Harry Roberts started a tradition, passing it on for generations
–Millidine Waterman, Hereford
One after another
I was born in Bethlehem in 1928 and my family moved to Bristol in 1942 when my father went to “war work.” Bristol was a small city occupied by descendants of Italian immigrants brought to the U.S. by the Grundy textile mills. Our next door neighbor had an elderly grandmother living with them who grew all kinds of peppers in the back yard and tomatoes that grew against the garage wall. The tomatoes were as big as small grapefruits and the vines grew so high that a ladder was need to reach them. Every rule for growing tomatoes says, “no fertilizer,” but this granny grew her garden her own way.
It was the time of World War II and gasoline was rationed. The local dairy resurrected its horse-drawn milk wagons for home delivery and Granny went into the street to gather up the horse manure which she used in her garden.
In the morning, this grandmother put on three or four homemade aprons, each over the other, and as the day wore on and the aprons got soiled, she just removed the soiled one and had a clean one beneath.
My Pennsylvania German grandmother used her apron for all sorts of household tasks and every day there was a clean one. The apron was used to quickly dust the furniture, carry food to the chicks, carry corn cobs from the wood shed to the kitchen stove for a quick fire and to wipe my tears.
I have worn glasses since I was a 2-year-old and my grandma also used her apron to clean my glasses after wiping my tears. She always said she wished she had a nickel for every time she had to clean my glasses. I still have one of my grandmother’s aprons. It brings back such wonderful memories.
When my grandfather went to the feed mill to buy chick food, Grandma always told him to pick out pretty grain bags so that she could use the fabric to make aprons and sun bonnets.
The apron was of great value to the housewife of long ago.
–Ruth, Schuylkill County
Three aprons a day
Our grandmother, Lillian Werst Leigh, was an amazing woman. She was the mother of 10 daughters and one son, my Dad, Archie Leigh of Bath. There were 26 of us grandchildren and I don’t have an accurate count of great or great-greats. She was lovingly called “Mom” by all of us, no matter what generation. Mom had the patience of Job, made her own patterns for our pinafores, kept a tidy home, was a great cook and baker. There were usually at least 10 around her table.
She always wore a breast pin on her dress and polished shoes and an apron. I never realized until raising my own children and having taken to wearing an apron when in the kitchen, that we never saw Mom with anything but a clean apron. Years later, I questioned one of my aunts about how my grandmother managed this. Aunt Nan said, “Don’t you know, Mom used three aprons a day. The morning apron was for cleaning, the afternoon apron was for cooking and baking, and after dinner, the third apron was for visiting with her neighbor. The Sunday apron was always white with some trim. Mom Leigh is more than a memory for her extended family, she is a pattern for mothering.
–Carol Leigh Cuono, Locke Heights, Washington Township
The apron lady from Quakertown
I grew up on the East Side of Allentown in the ’50s and moved back to the family home (1948).
I have great memories of aprons. My mother always wore an apron and instilled in my sister and myself the importance of wearing one as to not soil our clothing. My mother had an apron lady from Quakertown who would come about four times a year with a suitcase full of aprons for sale. My mother always bought two or three and they were always the “cobbler apron” style. It was a full coverage apron with pockets sewn across the bottom. I still have one of the original aprons and my sister may have one as well. It is a fond memory.
–Marty Landis, Allentown
Best corn fritters apron
My grandmother, Bessie Battenfield of Coplay, always wore aprons. She was a great cook, fantastic baker, (oh how I wished I’d have learned how to make her cinnamon buns), an immaculate housekeeper and a loving caregiver to my grandfather, not to mention a wonderful mom to three kids and “Memmy” or “Nana” to her six grandkids and great grandkids.
“Memmy” wore the kind of apron with a “bib” that went over her head and I’m so lucky to have one of hers still. But when I tried to put it on before I wrote this note to you, I was surprised to see that it had buttons instead of ties to close it. Memmy made the best corn fritters which I always asked for when I went to visit … and my memory is of her at the stove wearing an apron as she prepared my favorite meal. I fondly remember her twinkling eyes as she wiped her hands on her apron before she’d give us grandkids a hug.
Do I wear an apron? You bet I do! My favorite is one that my daughter-in-law, Melissa, sent me from Seattle. I wear it every time I make corn fritters and I remember my dear “Memmy” when I wear it.
–Melody Faisetty, Whitehall Township
Handmade and pressed
My mom has just given me a collection of aprons. They were made for her by my grandmother’s sister-in-law (so the sister-in-law of my mom’s mother in-law). Each time she came by to visit my mom (then a young, suburban mother) she would bring an apron, handmade and impeccably pressed. My mom just gave them to me recently in the hopes that I might want to use them. I’ve been trying to think of a way to display them in my new old “craft room.”
My husband and I recently purchased 1406 Hamilton in Allentown and are renovating it. For the first time, I will have a nice big room dedicated to my sewing and knitting! When the house was being used as a preschool, the side porch was enclosed and it makes for a great sewing room.
–Mar Haeussler, Allentown
An apron for the dogs
A Washington, D.C., friend who is a world traveler brought me an apron from Harrods after a trip to London. It is dark green [green is my favorite color] vinyl [perfect as I am a big-time cook] covered diagonally with figures of Scottie dogs; white ones [Westies] and black ones [Scotties]. My pups are Cairns [Scottish terriers, too] but to one who is not a dog owner/lover, they all look the same! It is for obvious reasons also my go-to gear when shampooing my pups. Lucky dog who gets groomed by a girl in an apron from Harrods!
–Kay Yankoski, South Whitehall Township
My one and only
This apron is the only one I have, and it was a gift from my college boyfriend’s mother. She made it for me and I have used it going on 35 years. I just recently found out that he passed away in 2007, so I took a self-portrait to mail her, and to thank her for her thoughtfulness all those years ago. I was enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon in my kitchen, baking an apple pie. I am a native Southerner (Nashville), and one of the many things I love about Pennsylvania are the local apples! I make my pie with a mixture of Cortland and Macintosh apples, with a crumb topping, while drinking a glass of wine and listening to Internet radio. Wearing the apron makes me feel very content. I love my kitchen.
–Patricia Roblin, Emmaus
Apron buddies
A recent memory of aprons was wearing them to make pierogis with my teacher friends in April.
With aprons on and rolling pins in hand, we made the dough, rolled it out and filled it with the potato mixture.
Most importantly, we have been friends since the late ’70s. We taught together and now we get together monthly to enjoy new experiences and one of them was “The Apron Chronicles: A Patchwork of the American Recollections.”
–Rita Parker, Milford Township
Future apron dreams
I do not have very many childhood memories of myself tugging on my mother’s apron while dancing around a cinnamon-scented kitchen. I only began to like aprons about two years ago because they were frilly and cute. Over these past two years, however, I began finding myself in the kitchen whipping up everything from gingersnap-pumpkin pie to gumbo. As cooking and baking became my favorite hobbies, aprons earned a place very close to my heart. My collection consists of only five aprons but it will continue to expand; each apron I acquire will tell a story between every intricate stitch. I often daydream about my future kitchen, with black-and-white tiled floors and light pink accents; all to be overshadowed by the long string of ruffles, paisley and gingham draped across a wall of their own. I look forward to my collection expanding to include the apron my mother gives me on my wedding day and the apron I wear to make my first Thanksgiving turkey. As of now, my aprons may only be a few knick-knacks hanging in my laundry room, but I know that in 10 years one of them will be tied around my waist as my daughter and I sing “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” and mix batter for a sugary treat. Out of all of the aprons I will collect over the years and all the tales they will embody, the most special will be stamped with my daughter’s floury fingerprints and hopefully will be the sweetest spot in her memory.
–Lauren Gross, Bethlehem
APRON CHRONICLES
*What: “Apron Chronicles: A Patchwork of American Recollections” is a traveling exhibit. It includes a clothesline containing 155 aprons plus stories and photos of the people who wore them.
*Where: Mercer Museum, Pine Street and Scout Way, Doylestown
*When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 13
*How much: $10, adults; $9, seniors; $6, children ages 6-16.
*Info: mercermuseum.org, 215-345-0210
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