Do modern kids and their moms know what an apron is? Perhaps, but they think of an apron encircling the waist of a waiter at a dine-in restaurant or a server at In-N-Out or McDonald’s. It’s not something worn at home except when Dad’s the BBQ man.
Tucked in the back of my apron drawer are few of both my grandmother’s aprons and one of my mom’s. I treasure them, but I don’t use them. In front of the drawer are the aprons Larry and I use. Mine are worn when I bake and his are for outdoor barbequing. Each has used our apron as a potholder when pulling baked bread from the oven or a hot pan from the stovetop. It’s handy and expedient.
Mothers’ or Grandmothers’ apron was used to protect the dress underneath because their wardrobes weren’t as large as modern-day women’s. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses. Further, in those eras, everybody sewed and aprons used less material.
An apron was wonderful for drying children’s tears – all one had to do was tug on the apron’s strings. Ask me how I know.
My dad’s family lived on a farm and a chicken coop stood on one side of the small backyard. The well’s pump stood sentry on the other side of the yard. The pump worked well when I, the oldest child, was sent to fetch water when Grandmother needed a large amount. For example, to boil potatoes for the ultra-fluffy mashed potatoes she made. She let me run the mixer for the mashed potato finesse.
She also let me help gather the chickens’ eggs and we carried them in her apron the short distance to the house. She told me that she’d used the apron as a receptacle when she gathered sticks from the yard for kindling, though the old iron stove had been replaced. Those big old aprons wiped her perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove, especially in Indiana’s hot, humid summers.
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.
While I don’t recall catching a disease from touching my Grandmother’s apron, the germ count must have been astronomical. All I ever caught from my grandmothers’ aprons was love.
Here’s how we think of aprons today… and how we offer excuses for our less than grandmotherly labors.
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