>>wear flour sack dresses

Until just this past year we dried our dishes with a set of kitchen towels
made by my grandma out of flour sacks during the 30s. They had a cross
stitched pattern along the short ends. The cross stitching finally wore
out, so now I use them out in the shop. That thick soft thread-bare fabric
is
just right to protect finished wood surfaces from the rough work bench.

I think I first heard this in Vermont:

Buy it new.
Wear it out.
Make it do.
Do without.

But there really is no reason to do without.

My older brother had a Sunday school suit jacket my mom made out of the
headliner
(fabric lining the inside of the roof) of an old abandoned car out in the
neighbor's
field. This must have been during the war when there was a shortage of
everything. I wore the jacket as a hand-me-down when I was a kid in the
early 50s, but it finally wore out. We gave it to the lady across the
street from my grandma's house, along with all our worn out wool pants who
cut them into strips and braded them into throw rugs for us. I've still got
the last one of those old rugs under my brass bed. I keep in under there,
and only slide it out on Sunday mornings, because if I walked on it every
day of the week, it would wear out too fast. But, don't worry about me
getting cold feet in my old age. When that rug wears out I'll chop it up,
mix in all those dust kittens under the bed and make me a nice pair of felt
slippers.


John
by hammer and hand great works do stand
by pen and thought best words are wrought

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