CLOTHES ADVENTURES

Michele and I shared many things; a bike, a portable radio, a room and clothes. Sharing clothes as teenagers did not go very smoothly. Lynn and Pam remember an incident involving us fighting over a skirt we both wanted to wear. We really got into it! The rumble was at the top landing of the second floor. Lynn and Pam were standing on the bottom landing. They say that they wondered what was going to come flying down the stairs next; already papers and notebooks had descended down. We were in a serious battle and they fully expected it was going to be one of us that would be hurled down the stairs. If you ask me today which one of us ended up wearing the skirt; I could not tell you. Michele's memory is better than mine and she might be able to remember---some day I will ask her.

I do not remember when we got our automatic washing machine; but I do remember the one we had before that was a wringer washing machine. We were always told to be careful feeding clothes through it. Lynn actually got her arm caught in it. She and Michele began fighting over who was going to put daddy's shirt through the wringer. Lynn grabbed the shirt. It was daddy's shirt and she was going to be the one who wrung it out. She shoved it into the wringer; the shirt went in very fast and so did Lynn's hand and part of her arm. A scream from Michele was heard by daddy and he flipped the switch off at the top of the basement stairs and saved Lynn from having an arm like Gumby, (a dark green flat humanoid character on T.V. in the 50s).

All of us remember the big box the new washing machine came in. It was placed in a corner of the basement and whenever we received second hand clothes from our cousins, the clothes were stored in this giant box. The box was so deep that you literally had to dive or climb into the box to retrieve the article of clothing; like dumpster diving. After you found the clothes they needed to be washed; after all they had been stored in the basement and had a bit of a musty odor. The smell of "musty" on my chosen garment was not my favorite fragrance.

Dress patterns were often seen laid out on our dinning room table. Mother would make dresses for Michele and I and then make us purses to match our dresses. They were drawstring purses that had a cottage cheese container placed into the bottom for stability. Mother also made clothes for Lynn and Pam. The frilly dresses that were made by mother were not Lynn's favorite frock---she would much prefer to live in her jeans.