August 14, 2023 - While reminiscing through some old family photographs from the 1950s, I happen to notice how my mother and grandmother always had on aprons while serving their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. The apron was important attire worn by early homemakers while doing their cooking and other housework.
When I was in high school here in Deep East Texas, most girls took a course titled “Home Economics” which taught them the basic necessities and knowledge of skills required to run a household. It was generally assumed that the young ladies would get married and remain in the home to keep the house running and the children taken care of. One of the first pieces of clothing the ladies were taught to make was their very own apron.
Apparently things have changed so much since the 1950s that the course is no longer taught in our schools, and the apron is no longer needed. Is it because the modern ladies no longer do the same kind of work their grandmothers had to do? I would wager a small amount that most young girls of today have never seen an apron in action and might not even know what one is used for.
The apron was to the housewife what the overalls were to the husband. They were work clothes. The apron had many uses but its main use was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was easier to wash aprons than dresses, and aprons required less material to make. Along with that, it sometimes served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
The apron was wonderful for drying a child’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. And when the weather turned cold, Grandma wrapped the apron around her arms for warmth. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled it carried out the hulls. In the autumn the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the dusty road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the back porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that old-time apron that served so many purposes.
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Today her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw out. OSHA would go crazy now days trying to figure out how many germs were on a typical apron, and it would probably be banned from use. I don’t think I ever caught anything from an apron but love.
In those few high schools that still teach a form of “Home Economics”, the name has been changed to “Human Ecology”, or perhaps “Family and Consumer Sciences”. New topics have been added, such as sexual education and drug awareness, along with topics such as fire prevention and safety procedures. I hope it still requires the students to make their very own apron, even if they never have the need to wear it. It is a very good reminder of what their grandmothers had to endure to run their household without the modern conveniences of today.
