Friday, May 22, 2009

Needles, Rags, and an Old Peach Tree


From teacher Lois Prout's classroom, "one can see a two room home made of packing case wood" with paper nailed on as a flimsy covering, "in which a large family is planning to spend the winter."

Inside the classroom, one ten-year-old girl carefully cuts along markings on a man's worn blue shirt, to create three pieces. Another mends kneeholes in a man's pair of wool underwear. A third shows Miss Prout the half-yard of new red cloth her dad had bought her. Combined with some other scraps, it would make enough for an apron.

In 1930, the fourth and fifth grade girls at Harriet School altered old, worn-out clothes into wearable ones that "will clothe children who otherwise might suffer from the severe weather. Stockings, silk, wool, or cotton, are being painstakingly mended...and even old underwear is being cut down to keep little boys and girls warm."

Not only were the children sewing usable garments going back into the community, they were doing it with style--they were hand-sewing on bias tape.

This is the colored decorative strip seen around the edges of things like potholders and aprons. It is folded three times and is devilishly difficult to sew accurately by hand. No problem for these ten-year-olds.

The girls also picked peaches from a tree next to the school and made peach jam. They canned tomatoes, pears, pickles, and grape and crab apple jelly. They made taffy apple refreshments for a school party. Oh, and they plan to redecorate the home ec's model dining room.

There was no stopping these Ypsi girls.

Miss Prout is one of Ypsi's unsung heroes of the Depression. With some needles, some worn-out clothing, and an old peach tree she taught two grades of girls how to create useful, warm, and nourishing things to benefit the community around them.

Dusty D is in awe of the grit and resourcefulness of this dedicated teacher. Hats off to Lois Prout.

3 comments :

Dusty D said...

Story is from the October 30, 1930 edition of the Ypsilanti Daily Press.

Harriet School is now called the Perry Child Development Center.

Things about this story that got to me:

1. I can't imagine a home ec class today working on a big pile of used long underwear. I'm sure there would be complaints that that is unsanitary, &c.--could be true--but they had no choice back then. The need was too great.

2. When the girl gets the cloth from her dad, it says "the purchase of the material by her father [was] a real event for her." It was half a yard of cloth. A measly half yard. And who knows what scrimping by her dad went into that tiny scrap. Cloth was in short supply--Ypsi was getting bolts of cloth from the Red Cross at the time, so that the poor could make clothes.

3. I also like the practical use of the peach tree. No food service truck rumbling in with prepackaged stuff...everything is so mediated today, in contrast to the directness of picking peaches and canning them right there at school.

Bob Garrett said...

Most Americans really are pretty spoiled these days. I wonder if we could survive another Great Depression?

Great article!

Dusty D said...

Hi Bob!

Yes, these Depression-era stories are real eye-openers for me. Just read another one about a shoe drive in Ypsi...but even after the charity drive, they only had enough shoes for kids 12 and older.

The younger ones went barefoot and there were special instructions given to teachers to make sure the barefoot kids--in late autumn, mind you--were not teased or discriminated against. I'm sure they were, though, kids being kids.