Memories & Nostalgia

Do women wear aprons anymore? I think they do, in fact, I know they do, but when I put an apron on, it doesn’t look anything like the apron’s my mother or grandmother used to wear, and doesn’t get used nearly as much.  My mother always, always dressed nicely each day, wearing a dress or skirt with a sweater or blouse.  It was only in the later years when teens had moved on to wearing jeans in high school that I remember my Mom finally wearing pants or slacks.

But an apron was very important if you wanted to keep your dress clean, and I suppose it still is.  I read a little write up in a recent newsletter from a quilting club I belong to that was so nostalgic, and I thought I’d share it with you, it’s called “The History of Aprons”...I’ll give credit where it’s due…as soon as I find out who wrote this!

“I don’t think our kids know what an apron is.  The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.  Here’s some other things Grandma’s apron was good for:

• It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning ears.
• From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and somtimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
• When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.
• And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.
• Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
• Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
• From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables.  After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
• In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
• When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
• When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
• It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that ‘old time apron’ that seved so many purposes.

PS - I don’t think I ever caught anything from an Apron”

Star Trek (2009), the new movie is coming out this week, and if you grew up watching the show, it’s going to be a double-treat….you’ll have the old shows to compare with the new movie…and with the advancement in movie-making technology, I am sure the difference will be quite extreme!

As a baby boomer I wonder whether I’m going to be captivated by the movie enough to be able to get past Captain James T. Kirk being anyone other than William Shatner, or Spock being any other actor than Leonard Nemoy.  I have great memories of watching the show while growing up, my Dad even enjoyed it and he was pretty picky about television programs, especially if they were shows that his kids liked.

I can admit to you that hubby and I probably won’t go to the first showing at the movies, I’m going to wait for the reviews to come in, and then decide.  If they are fantastic, and seeing Star Trek on the big screen is essential to enjoy the movie, then we’ll go, if not, as we do with most movies, hubby and I will wait for the movie to come out on DVD and rent it somewhere like BLOCKBUSTER .

In fact, if you are young enough to have missed the older Star Trek movies, or the series, I’m sure BLOCKBUSTER will have them available for rental.

If you’ve been to the movie, please let me know what you thought!  Should I run out and watch it on the big screen, or wait to rent the movie on DVD?

How could I forget the first Earth Day?  It was my last year of high school, and being April 22, 1970, it was only a couple months before graduation. I’m sure my focus at that time was on the day I would FINALLY be finished with school…at least the schooling you didn’t have a choice about…but I do remember caring about the environment and natural things from early childhood, so the day had some significance to me.

The “hippy” movement had been going on for some time, and the “Jesus” movement was still to come.  Rebelling against “the establishment” was “groovy” and though there were elements of the rebellion that weren’t good, the desire to return to natural things that took place then, and we see repeating itself now, was taking shape in a very big way.

One way that this was expressed was by setting aside a day to focus on the environment, and wake up “the establishment” to the need to conserve our natural resources.  I wasn’t part of the “college scene” yet, but knew a lot about demonstrations…so very popular at the time, anti-war demonstrations, anti-this, anti-that.  People gathered by the thousands to show their support for a concept started by an environmentalist and politician, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin.

Next year will be the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, where did the time go?  Have we learned anything?

Click here to learn more about GOING GREEN and SAVING GREEN.

Today as I hear the news about deploying missile destroyers to N. Korea, for some reason memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis came to mind…maybe it’s the news report today plus the fact that we watched a movie we love, “White Squall” this weekend, and in it there is  mention of the Bay of Pigs and a confrontation with a Cuban ship.  I guess that’s all coming together to remind me of those tense days in the early 1960’s.

Starting my life in the 1950’s meant that we were steeped in “cold war” thinking, and at least for me, I found myself wondering when the button would be pushed that would annihilate us all, yes, I know, sounds extreme, but being one who thinks a lot, the mind can go in so many places it probably would be best to avoid….especially for an impressionable child.  I remember “air raid drills” when we were in school, interesting, because I attended a private school that used old, abandoned army barracks for classrooms…going out into the hallway and sitting along the cold, cinder block walls with our hands over our heads.  That can strike fear in any child!

Of course we had television, but the radio was on all the time, and during the hourly news updates, I found myself sitting very close to it to hear what the latest report would be.  I remember praying a lot, and keeping my Bible close, even at at school, after all, God is not something you can touch and hold, but His Word was something I could hold in my hands, the closest tangible connection, and brought great comfort.  I also remember Mom reminding her sometimes-fearful child that God would take care of us, there was nothing to fear.

At times I think that the world is more dangerous than it was back then, but the truths that Mom shared are the same, and my source of comfort hasn’t changed.

There’s a nice timeline of the events of that time, if you’re curious.

Where were you during that time in our history?

A few weeks ago, we were surfing through the channels on one of the many snowy weekends we’ve had this cold winter, and came across the animated show “Davey and Goliath”.  My husband and I both remembered the show from our childhood, and decided to watch.

“Davey and Goliath” is a television series that is so different from what you see in animated programs today…cute, entertaining, and full of positive, moral input to fill the mind instead of the “mindless” entertainment children are exposed on many, not all, television programs today.  Okay, so maybe I am a little…or a lot…old fashioned:-)

DVD’s of this classic program are available now, fully restored and remastered - 4 DVD’s with 450 minutes of Davey, Goliath, and their family and friends.  The price is under $20! You can’t beat that, and I’ll bet that your young children will enjoy them…and maybe blog one day about their memories.

Yes, this is us, the picture taken in the fall of 1978, a little over 30 years ago, so this is our 30th Valentines Day together. We went back and forth on that a bit today, me thinking it was 31 years, and he reminding me no, it was 30, as we took a quiet country drive and stopped at some spots along the way that have become part of our memories. Memories are a wonderful thing about being with the same person for so many years, you have more and more of them that bind you together if you have built a good relationship.

I got my beautiful single red rose, something hubby gives me each year, and a few other little more intimate, sweet secret things that have become special to us as a couple, those little things that are private, and bind us simply because they are nobody’s business but out own. He got his candy that he loves, and we shared time together riding, talking, stopping to eat along the way. We chose a simple place to eat, and as we went in I thought, I wonder how many others will be spending Valentines Day so simply…not trying to impress one another…just enjoying one another…as I looked around I saw many couples of all ages and of kinds. The older ones didn’t need to speak a lot, they were content just to be together. There were very young couples who didn’t know one another as well, talking, and gazing into one another’s eyes. Then there were those in between who shared their evening together with a little one, maybe they couldn’t get a babysitter. The beauty of relationship was all around.

As the years go by, my husband and I learn to treasure each other more, and to thank God for the gift of our relationship with one another.

Happy Valentines Day!

It’s the anniversary of the Beatles unforgettable arrival to America…at least unforgettable to someone my age.  I remember so clearly sitting in the Chapel of the private school I was going to, (I feel like I’ve shared this before…Deja Vu?? I’ll have to check.)  Anyway, the girls were all abuzz about these guys called the Beatles who were coming to America.  They were already popular in England, and one of their songs, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already a hit here in the USA.  That was my first introduction to what would become a phenomena, watching girls faint, cry and scream hysterically on television, so loudly that you couldn’t even hear the music.  My own collection of Beatle Cards and crush on Paul McCartney, the “cute Beatle”…reading all the vital statistics about each one of the Beatles on the back of those cards.  Listening to their songs on my first Transistor Radio.

Enjoy again the arrival of the Beatles, thanks to the person who contributed this to YouTube, arriving February 7th, 1964 in Kennedy Airport from Heathrow: