I’m old enough to remember when people wore aprons, largely because I grew up in a rural area that was a decade or so behind the rest of the country. My aunts and my grandmother wore aprons when they were cooking, canning, and cleaning, and it was unusual to see my grandmother around the house without an apron on. To be honest, I never thought much about it. I just assumed it was for protecting her clothes and I never put a lot of thought into everything else it would have been used for. It also never occurred to me that maybe Grandma didn’t have a lot of clothing and that she needed an apron to protect what she had. So regardless of how old I am, count me in the bunch who took a “germy” old apron for granted. Enjoy this trip down memory lane.
Do you know the story behind the apron? For most people, it’s an innocuous piece of clothing they use every day, in the kitchen, or at work. For some, it’s a kink or at least part of it.
However, the apron used to be more important, more important than you could imagine.
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.
It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes 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-folk 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 served so many purposes.
REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.
They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.
I don’t think I ever caught anything from an apron but Love.
