Junior Year Prom Dress

Easily influenced......those two words describe me......earlier this week Kacey at WineontheKeyboard blog posted a photo from a FEW years back of a prom dress she had made for herself, prompting me to do the same........amidst a flood of memories:

**

**

How well I recall the circumstances surrounding the construction of this dress! "Last Minute" could be my middle name.........and, I had waited until such a time to work on putting this dress together the week before prom during the spring when I was a junior in high school. Let's see......that would have been in 1975. Pastel colors and frilly styles with puffy sleeves were in fashion! (And, yes, due to my penchant for being a clutter-keeper, the dress pattern is still in my possession, as evidenced by the first photo.)

**
It seems we had a few days off from school.......it probably was Easter break, and I had planned to use those free days to sew my dress. Well, wouldn't you know, adverse weather came along-----it must have been an early spring ice storm-----causing our electricity to go out for several days! We didn't have a generator on our farm; we had no livestock left by then, so my dad didn't think we needed one, I guess. Well........the sewing machine, of course, certainly did need power in order to work, so I was up a creek without a paddle.

**
But......where there's a will, there's a way........we asked one of my grandmas if we could move the sewing machine to her house in town so I could work on my dress there. That was OK with her, and the sewing machine in its cabinet was transported to the spare room in Grandma's house and I stayed there for the next few days, sewing like mad. At one point, my hurrying turned to carelessness and while trimming off threads at the end of a seam, I managed to snip a hole in the fabric. Oh, man, I was about sick about that! It was on the front side of the bodice, but fortunately near the arm area. I found some iron-on bonding stuff which would adhere to the inside of the rip to hold it together; it was still visible, but when the dress was worn, the damaged area was pretty much hidden by my arm and not noticeable to anyone else. (The proof of this----the dress itself----is in a box in the storeroom upstairs.)

**

Being at Grandma's house for a few days was a treat, of course. (This was not the grandma who had been a country school teacher.) She was a very quiet person, never smiling much, but loved to cook, so I would have been a very well-fed seamstress for those few days! She made super-yummy chocolate chip cookies and tapioca pudding which she always served in pretty green glass pudding cups that had a clear pedestal base. I've seen sets like them at a collectible shop, and someday hope to buy a one if possible......just for the sake of memories of Grandma. (Years later, my aunt got rid of all of Grandma's dishes, for some reason, without offering them to any of us in the family!)

**

Grandma had been born in northern Wisconsin, in 1901, to a farming family eking out a living in an area of poor farmland. They eventually moved to Waterloo, Iowa, but not before Grandma had survived a bout with polio at a young age. She would later relate that she saw angels filling her room when she was so very sick. The polio left her with one leg smaller and shorter for the rest of her life. She wore a special shoe and walked with an awkward limp. Maybe that's part of the reason she didn't smile much; the other being that Bell's Palsy caused one side of her face to droop when she was in her early 60's, and her smiles looked lop-sided after that.

**

Grandma's house was neat as a pin, and she would hum a funny little tune while doing laundry. She wore a housedress and apron everyday; and enjoyed watching game shows and BOXING matches (of all things) on television. Grandma loved her coffee, too, and one time when there were rumors of an upcoming shortage, she bought many cans of her favorite coffee and squirrelled them away in her top kitchen cupboards! Grandma never drove a car, either, and often rode along with us to go shopping.

**

Like I said, Grandma was pretty quiet, in the way she lived her life, and, literally, in her speaking. When she did say something, it came out rather quick and abrupt. Perhaps she had long ago learned to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself, and dedicate herself to cooking good meals and keeping an orderly house.

**
**

It is just a blast digging into the old photos in my closet! I haven't looked at them in years, and when I gaze at myself in these scenes from long ago, I can hardly recall being even remotely acquainted with the person I was back then. Years and years of busy, exhausting motherhood and farmwifery carried me far from whoever that girl was. Would I even want to get reacquainted with her? I'm not sure........

**
**

Hey, if any of you have old prom pictures or other high school photos lying around........why not post some for the blogworld to see!! You're among friends........we won't laugh at you........(yeah, right!!).

**
**