Music to Sew By
May 28, 2022
ALAN writes:
At 8:30 on weekday mornings in 1956, women in St. Louis could listen to “Music to Sew By” on radio station KCFM. That same year, newspaper columnist Ruth Millett wrote:
By the time she is 16, there are certain homemaking skills every girl ought to know.
…..She ought to know how to sew at least well enough to keep her clothes mended and hems at the right length. If she is encouraged to make some of her own clothes, so much the better…. [“Some Skills Every Girl Should Know,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 19, 1956, p. 12-l]
Hems? As in skirts and dresses?
Imagine how quaint those things must sound to Cool People, who are of course immeasurably smarter than people were in 1956.
Can’t you just hear the chorus of Cool People and Feminists saying “How primitive! How oppressive!”
The Amish might understand the wisdom in such advice, but they are not Cool People. Excluding the Amish, how many American women under age 40 today who are not in the fashion business know how to sew? How many make or mend their own clothes?
Thousands of women in St. Louis in the 1950s knew how to sew — and did. My mother was one of them, as were other women in our extended family. I couldn’t count the times during my boyhood when she was seated at her sewing machine and working on this or that garment for family or friends – a monogrammed blouse for herself, a dress for a friend, alterations in my boyhood clothes as I grew, and doll clothes for her niece, among many other projects. My mother used an industrial model sewing machine. But I doubt she ever listened to “Music to Sew By” because the noise of the sewing machine might have drowned out any such music. She concentrated fully on whatever project was at hand. She did not want or like distractions while she was working.
On a shelf of knick-knacks in later years, when she no longer sewed, she kept three thimbles, a miniature dress form, and a plastic miniature replica of a sewing machine, 3 inches high, with a tiny pair of scissors and a Butterick Patterns priced at 15 cents.
Thousands of women in St. Louis and small neighboring cities worked as seamstresses for dozens of garment-manufacturing companies in St. Louis from the 1930s through the 1950s. Washington Avenue was lined with their offices and factories. That was when downtown St. Louis was alive with commerce, industry, and productivity. (Washington Avenue today is a preferred location for crime sprees, one reason why Downtown is now Deadtown.)
[One bright note: Although hundreds of dogs now reside in downtown St. Louis, there have been no confirmed reports of dogs shooting anyone or stealing automobiles, and statistics on crimes by canines are consistently lower than those on crimes by Homo Saps.]
At one time, more than ten thousand people worked in the garment industry in St. Louis. The St. Louis Fashion Creators were a group of garment-manufacturing companies. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis stands on land that was the site of a month-long exhibition called the Mid-America Jubilee in 1956. One building at the Jubilee was a geodesic dome in which the Fashion Creators presented an exhibit called “The World of Fashion.” I know, because I was there and I saw those things.
While on the Jubilee grounds, at age 6, I also rode in a stagecoach, petted sheep, sat on a turtle, drove a tractor, and walked through a B-29.
Here is my mother at the Mid-America Jubilee in September 1956, with the Geodesic Fashion Dome behind her. An exhibit to celebrate the achievements and promise of American free enterprise, a blue sky, and the most important person in my life ….. at age 6, I didn’t realize how good I had it.
— Comments —
S. writes:
I enjoyed Alan’s story about his mother and her ability to sew, and the garment industry in St. Louis. He writes so fondly of his mother and of that time in our history, where life was genteel, and we actually made something.
When I grew up, my mother taught me to sew. (I was born in the early 60’s.) My mother’s sewing machine and little sewing scissors got plenty of use, first by her in the 50’s, and then by me.
Fast forward. I volunteered at the local school about 10 years ago, teaching an after-school program I called “fabric arts.” I was shocked on the first day to learn that most of the middle schoolers could not even thread a needle! (I had to “dumb down” the program, and do a lot of pre-teaching.) Also, anything these kids do not learn at home is not ordinarily taught at school. At least when I grew up, there was a “home economics” class to fill the gap, where kids learned to sew the basics, making a pillow, and sewing on a button.
Honestly, the picture of Alan’s mom in her everyday dressy clothes (that she probably made herself) in front of the fashion dome celebrating American free enterprise – it all looked so dignified. It made me nostalgic for something we have all lost, for what was a much better time than now.
