SENILE, and "FEED SACK DRESSES"

No one believes seniors. Everyone thinks they are senile .

For instance:

An elderly couple were celebrating their sixty years of marriage. The couple had married as childhood sweethearts and moved to another city. Now they were retired and returning back to their old neighborhood to live. Holding hands they walked back to their old school. It was not locked so they entered, and found their old desk they had shared, where Andy had carved ‘I love you Sally’.

On their way home, a bag of money fell out of an armored truck, practically landing at their feet. Sally quickly picked it up, but not sure what to do with it they took it home. She counted the money, “There is 50 thousand dollars here, Andy.”

Andy said, “We must give it back.”

“No,” said Sally, “finder’s keepers”.

So she hid it in the attic. The next day two FBI men were in the neighborhood looking for the money, and they knocked on the door, ”Pardon me ma’am, but did you see a bag that fell out of an armored truck yesterday?”

Sally said no. But Andy said, “She is lying, she has it hid up in the attic.”

Sally said “Don’t believe him! He is getting senile.”

One of the men says, “Tell us the story from the beginning.”

Andy says, “Well, when Sally and I were walking home from school

yesterday. . .”

The first FBI man said to his partner, “Lets get out of here!”

(Author unknown)

Here is a memory:

SUGAR SACK SLIPS, FLOUR SACK BLOOMERS

And those feed sack dresses. When I was growing up, no one threw away anything.

We made fewer trips to town, and most of the store bought food we needed was bought in bulk, just twice a year. Most of our food was home grown or raised, and canned or dried.

Daddy bought such items as flour, sugar, coffee, salt, cocoa, corn meal, vanilla and sometimes a coconut and bananas. And of course, feed for old Snooks, our cow.

Daddy went to the little country store and charged the groceries until harvest time. As a share-cropper, raising cotton mostly, he had very little money for anything before the cotton was picked and ginned.

The feed for cows came in 100 lb bags made of cotton fabric in several patterns. Flour came in 50 lb bags made of a thin cotton gauzy type material. Sugar came in 25 lb bags made of the same material.

Girls wore bloomers, a word used then for what we know now as panties. They came almost to our knees, however. Many of our farming mothers made the bloomers from flour sacks, and slips from sugar bags that were thinner and cooler in summer. Some of the material was like what we used for diapers. Mother’s also used them for quilts and aprons. Sugar sacks made nice dish towels.

The year I was 12. My daddy brought home a beautiful feed sack for Snooks. It was white with roses splashed over it. My grandmother told daddy to try and get the same pattern on his next trip. Daddy did find one, and wanted to know why she wanted the feed sacks. “I’m going to make Helen a dress”.

The style was yards of material for the skirt, with very long sashes, and butterfly sleeves. Even for someone as skinny and puny as I was, it took two feed sacks to make a dress.

The skirt of the dress was gathered at the waist. One sack was used for the skirt alone. The butterfly sleeves were gathered also, and the sashes made a large bow, and hung almost to the hem. We wore our dresses mid-calf in that time.

I was so proud of my pretty dress. Of course, several girls knew it was made from a feed sack, and they made fun of me. But I told them I was glad my grandmother thought enough of me to hand sew a dress.

Next trip, daddy got a gingham sack. So Maw made me another dress. Not long after that, we were in town, and Maw looked at fabric. “Helen, come over here a minute and look at this material”

“Maw, it is just like my dresses!”

R. Mitchell (c) 2011