NOTE: My niece, Pam Stith, wrote this post:
Aunt Jane and her husband, Uncle John, and their daughters, Alice and Carolyn, had a happy home and a well ordered life. But that doesn’t mean that everything went according to plan every day.
Uncle John worked for Gadsden [AL] Hardware and had regular office hours, 8 to 5. He came straight home after work, arriving at 5:15. Every day, 5:15, exactly. Aunt Jane usually had supper ready to put on the table for him and the girls when he got home.
But some days didn’t go as planned. Sometimes a sewing project took longer than expected because the sewing machine fouled up. Sometimes she had an idea for a dress that combined a collar from one pattern, the sleeves from another and the skirt she couldn’t find in her patterns so she had to create her own. The process of thinking through how to create the dress she had in her mind, or one that someone had asked her to make, was one of her favorite things to do. Sometimes she lost track of time.
But time didn’t stop.
5:05 — Time to stop sewing and clean the table.
5:07 – Really must stop sewing and start supper.
5:12 – Out of time! Get in the kitchen and get busy. Get out the iron frying pan, turn on the burner, splash in a little bit of oil.
5:13 – Find an onion and start chopping.
5:14 – Throw the onion in the oil to sauté.
5:15 – The front door opens: “Hey, Babe. Something smells good!”
“It’ll be good, too. Just sit down in your chair and rest. It’ll be ready shortly.”
5:16 – Decide what to cook for supper.
Postscript: Jane’s husband, John Morris Greer, died almost 35 years ago, on Nov. 28, 1984, when he was 63.
Sister Jane, who is 91 years old, still sews three to four hours a day for the public, resting, she told me, whenever she feels the need.
Here is a sample of Jane’s work, the wedding veil she made for our great niece, Hannah Rachel Stith, worn at her marriage to Caleb Brett Pennington on Oct. 28, 2017, in Canaan Baptist Church, Bessemer, AL.
Jane was younger then, only 89.
Coming Monday: Popeye The Sailor Man
