Night Out on Pennies

(things one likes remembering…)

fashion-norma a night out on pennies The one piece of furnishings I most remember from all my pre-marriage years was a treadle sewing machine. It had a place in every home my parents made, from the San Francisco flat at Chestnut and Steiner streets (where I was born into the hands of a midwife); the flat on Pixley Alley before I began grammar school; the one-room and cellar quarters at an aunt’s home, into which she took us when our sick Father couldn’t work; after a couple of years there, the flat at the corner of Lombard and Webster; when I was in junior high school, the upstairs flat of a two-flat building (the first home my parents were able to begin buying); and, finally, the single-family Corte Madera home in what-was-to-me illustrious Marin County. From there, at age 18, I married….
I was about 7, during World War II years, when Mother let me sit at the treadle machine and, after she disengaged the driving wheel’s cord, I would let my feet dance the treadle. It became obvious as years progressed that I’d been born with serious sewing potential. It went far beyond simply knowing how to work a machine: I sewed some of my high school clothes, and my graduation dress as well. Read more…

Comments are closed.