All Dressed Up, Part 1
As I was growing up in little Ashland City, Tennessee, my family was far from well-0ff. We moved into a duplex with our first indoor plumbing when I was almost four. Sometime after that, Daddy bought our first car. We certainly didn’t have a dishwasher or a garbage disposal. While I saw automatic washers and dryers on television, my mother was using a wringer washing machine on the back porch and a clothesline in the backyard.
Our home was neat and clean. Most of our furniture was new, but sparse. While Mother had waited for me to born and for Daddy to get out of the Army (which happened about three days apart), she rode on a bus forty minutes each way every day to work in the Aladdin electronics factory in Nashville. With her earnings, Mother had purchased a metal dinette set and a bedroom set with bed, dresser, and chest of drawers for herself and Daddy.
By the time I was in first grade, my parents had added a cabinet-model television set, a black swivel chair, and a pink couch with the scratchy upholstery that was popular at the time. Oh, how I hated the feel of that fabric on the backs of my legs. I wonder if that is why I loved to sit in the black swivel chair. In a corner of the living room was a table, holding Mother’s feather-weight Singer sewing machine.
Mother and Daddy bought matching twin beds with ship captain wheels on the headboards for Steve and me. In the hall was an antique chest of drawers with drawers that struggled to open and shut, plus a chifferobe that once belonged to Daddy’s parents, Daddy Leland and Mama Sue.
The only cabinet in our kitchen was the one under the sink. Beside it was a white enamel-top table where Mother made biscuits, pie crusts, and other yummy stuff (it’s now in our kitchen). We had a Frigidaire (with aluminum ice cube trays) and a stove. Mother used to leave the oven door open on cold mornings to warm the kitchen. An old Hoosier cabinet that had also belonged to my grandparents held our mismatched dishes.
My home didn’t look like what I saw on Leave It To Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, or even The Andy Griffith Show, but I am grateful to have grown up the way I did.
Though our home was humble, when we walked out the door to school or to church, we were dressed up to look as nice as the real children in our lives and the images of the ones we saw on television. Mother worked hard to make this happen. She sewed, she washed, she hung out, she ironed–I am grateful for that, too.
in my uncle’s wedding. I’m the one with the lightest hair.
The other little girl is Daddy’s baby sister, my Aunt Emily.
I believe in helping children feel valuable. I think Mother making sure we looked nice was one way she did that for us.
Even God shows His love for His children by the way He clothes us.
And why are you worried about clothing?
Observe how the lilies of the field grow;
they do not toil nor do they spin,
yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory
clothed himself like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field,
which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace,
will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!
Matthew 5:28-30