Apron Chronicles

The other day while at the laundromat, I watched a woman walk in, carrying her basket of clothes. She wore a clean, light blue house dress with tiny floral print, and a crisp white apron with pockets was tied firmly around her waist. Her brown hair was pulled back into a low pony tail, but wisps of hair had escaped and fell forward. With wire rimmed glasses perched on her nose, she went about the business at hand of sorting the clothes, spraying any spots with stain remover, and putting the clothes in various washers. She poured bleach in, added some kind of powder detergent,  and went back and added something else. She was so involved with this job of washing clothes. It seemed important to her. And she seemed content. She probably wasn’t much older than me; yet she appeared older by the clothes she wore. It was a breath of fresh air, really, a reminder of simpler times, when my Mom wore a house dress and an apron and baked every single day.

I thought about how nice it would be to wear an apron, with roomy  pockets to collect all the things I'd find during the day, all the odds and ends, like a paper clip, pens, coins, etc.  The pockets would also a good place to keep a kleenex, especially during a bad cold!

I am a MESSY cook. I always seem to splash a little bit of this or that on my clothes as I stir, mix, or fold the ingredients. Grease splatters on my shirt, spaghetti sauce sputters, and fried eggs talk back! If I wore an apron I would save a LOT of clothes and heartache on laundry day! I keep saying that I will buy one, yet I never do.

In my post on Flashback Friday, I spoke about the Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas.

 Their visiting exhibition was this wonderful exhibit entitled, "Apron Chronicles". Two large ropes were hung criss-cross spanning the large room, with 300 aprons clothes-pinned to them!

Special Holiday aprons

With blurry eyes, a thick lump in my throat, and memories of my Mom weighing heavily on my mind, I gazed lovingly at the delicate pieces of fabric hanging before me. There were all kinds of aprons, from downright fancy that you wouldn't want to spill ANYTHING on, to everyday aprons.

The exhibit is based on the book, "Apron Chronicles" by EllynAnne Geisel.

EllynAnne collected stories in this wonderful little book about people and their relationship with aprons, their memories of their moms, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, etc., wearing aprons and the chores that they did like gathering eggs in the folds of the apron, sticking fresh picked vegetables in the pockets, wearing certain aprons for doing the washing, etc. Kristina Loggia took the photographs in the book, which are gorgeous.

The above photos of the aprons are courtesy of www.apronchronicles.com . No cameras were allowed in the exhibit. I recommend you click on the link to get a glimpse into the book, read some of the pages, and feel the warmth and love that this book exudes.

This video is a little long, but quite interesting, of the exhibit. Please watch it - you will surely enjoy it!



And finally, when my Mom died in 2000, I grabbed a couple of her old aprons, her banged up old measuring cups and some of her other cooking utensils, and put together a shadow box for all my siblings. I cut pieces of her apron and put it over a batting for the background, then placed a hand-written recipe card, a picture of Mom sitting in the kitchen, and some of the above pieces on the apron. Even though I am NOT a crafty person, I was happy with the way it turned out. My sister took this picture for me of her shadow box - mine is packed away. If you look closely, you can see that on the recipe card, my Dad added his two cents! It says, "Try 6 first".

"A" is for Abilene, Animals, Aprons and Art

Our plans were to tour the zoo in the morning, then see what the Grace Museum had to offer in the afternoon. We ate breakfast and got ready to leave. Right then, 8, count them, EIGHT, C-130's took off right over our head, probably heading off for some kind of mission. If we weren't fully awake before that, we surely were by the time the last plane flew over!



The Abilene Zoo is quite small, but still enjoyable. My favorite exhibit was the giraffes, of course, my all time favorite animal. There were two of them and wherever we would walk along the perimeter of their pen, they would follow us, their heads bent curiously watching us. It was advertised in the paper to "feed the giraffes", but I didn't see any evidence of that, or anyone to ask how we could go about doing that. But I suspect that was why the giraffes were watching us so copiously.




Many of the other animals were not in open areas with moats and walls; but in cages with bars so it was not conducive for photos.

The buffaloes happened to be in a nice open area, and there was a large blue heron in there with them. Jim made some kind of call out to the bird and it responded. Then Jim walked away, and the bird began to follow him, just like in the movie Evan Almighty when the animals followed Steve Carell. First the giraffes, then the bird - it was quiet funny!

We finished off the morning at the zoo, grabbed a quick lunch, then tracked down some sculptures.





In the afternoon we went to the Grace Museum. It was constructed in 1909 by Colonel W.L. Beckman and named for his daughter, Grace. It was Abilene's premier hotel for many years, and since it was located right across from the train depot, one of the first sights seen by the passengers. The hotel was remodeled in 1946 and the named was changed to the Drake Hotel. In 1973 the hotel closed when its boiler failed. The Abilene Preservation League purchased the hotel in 1986 in order to preserve it. It was renovated and restored in 1992.




It now has three museums under its one roof. On the first floor is a large ballroom, the beautiful lobby, and three galleries. They have both permanent and rotating exhibits. One of the exhibits was a large display of cut up wooden pieces on a wall. If you pressed a piece it would make a musical sound - from a blast of a horn, to a piano key to drums. It was really cool.



In another gallery was the visiting exhibit, "Apron Chronicles". We entered a large, rectangular room and saw the crissed-crossed clothes lines with aprons from the 1950's, clothes-pinned to the ropes. I immediately started to cry because it reminded me of my mom - she always wore an apron when she baked.

Photographs of the people who had been interviewed for the book were posted on the walls, along with a copy of their interview. They talked about the wonderful memories they had of someone in their life who wore an apron - a mom, grandmother, or a wife. To learn more about this exhibit go to their website: http://www.apronchronicles.com/, or read the book, "Apron Chronicles", Stories collected by EllynAnne Geisel and Photography by Kristina Loggia.

The second floor was divided in half; to the left was another gallery - to the right was the Children's Museum. We quickly perused the museum. It had a lot of fun things to do like play with a large size "Operation" game; an exhibit on poop; an ambulance that you can sit in and pretend to drive, along with a body in the back; and a little theater. Kids could easily have a ball in this place.



The third floor is the History Museum with authentic recreations of kitchens and dining rooms from 1910-1948, representative of life in Abilene, although it looks like it could have represented life in anytown, USA. The kitchen tile in the 1948 kitchen looked awfully familiar to what we originally had in our kitchen back home, when I was growing up! The third floor also features an authentic recreation of a 1940s boot shop, from Albert J. Mallouf, who was a local bootmaker . The shop has some original equipment, handmade tools, samples of many types of leather, even the original cash register used in Mallouf's shop, and Mallouf boots, all set in a working environment of a brick facade and old plank flooring.

This is the most beautiful sculpture that we saw today. It is called "Jacob's Dream". It is located on the Abilene Christian University Campus and was created by Jack Maxwell. Inspired by the biblical account in Genesis 28, the sculpture site consists of a towering 32.5 foot bronze of four angels descending and ascending a ladder between heaven and earth. The sculpture is surrounded by almost 100 massive blocks of limestone, each etched with scripture.