Around the Town: When good things come through the mail

By Loretta Humble/Around the Town

My new oilcloth tablecloth came in the mail. Two yards of it, cut from the bolt, it is bright red with vivid pictures of fruit all over it. It doesn’t match my sedate moss green kitchen cabinets, but I love it. It brings back some kind of childhood memories, though I can’t exactly remember what they are. I don’t think Mama had one, but I must have seen them in other country homes we visited, welcomed into tidy, sparsely furnished kitchens, brightened by a cheery oilcloth tablecloth.

When I was a kid, nearly all things new and exciting came in the mail. I barely remember a few things coming from Montgomery Ward, but most of the time they came from Sears. How we loved that Sears catalog! Mama ordered patterns and material to make all my school clothes. She could sew great, but we didn’t have a lot of money, so we had to choose carefully.

As I write this, I am looking into the next room where I can see a quilt Mama made that holds scraps from at least two skirts and a suit I wore in high school and loved. There is a rust corduroy with little shells on it, a heavy green tweed (the suit,) and a gray and lavender check wool. Somehow this quilt has escaped the ravages of time, and they look exactly like they did when I wore them more than sixty years ago. I wish I had been more careful with other quilts Mama made, so that I could recall my whole wardrobe history.

The other delight the mail brought us was books from the state library. We had almost no books of our own. But we ordered a ton of them though the years, beginning when Mama had to read most of them to me. Those books made a big difference in my life..

Of course I can’t order from the Sears catalog now days, so I order from Amazon.com and eBay. But still I get that thrill when the mailman brings me something new. He brings me books sometimes, still, but mostly now my books come through the air, in the form of audio books that I listen to on my phone. They come from Amazon, too.

I know there is an argument that we shouldn’t be supporting these giant companies, but should support local merchants. When I was a kid, we never heard that. But maybe they were saying it in town, and we didn’t hear it, since we just went to town once a week for groceries and didn’t stay long when we did. Besides they usually didn’t have it in Malakoff, and we weren’t going to go way off, even to Athens, much less big cities like Corsicana or Tyler. Come to think of it, the things I order now can’t be found in my little town, and less and less do I go out of town shopping. So I guess I don’t have to feel guilty for ordering from the giants.

But we can always hope more stores will come to offer a wider variety of things, so we can buy more of our goods right here in town. I’m doing my part to encourage that happening. I started with Kristi at Rusty Circus, by showing her a picture of my table with my new tablecloth on in, and asking her to order a bunch of bolts of oilcloth so people can come in and see their choices right before them and order exactly the inches they needed, instead of having to buy a yard when they only needed a foot more. She loved my tablecloth, but didn’t really jump on the idea. So I took my proposition over to the cute new shops on Mitcham Street. First Glynn at The Cottage, then Shirley and Stacey at Rustic Home admired my idea, but were about as underwhelmed as Kristi about the proposition of stocking it in their store. When the new sweet shop, Mister Sweet Tooth opens in a week or two, maybe I’ll try them. I told Kristi if they reject me, I’m just going to open my own oilcloth shop.

That’s great, she says, What are you going to call it? Oilcloth are Us? Maybe, I tell her, Why not? But maybe I won’t have to. I know Kristi is thinking about it. She just sent me pictures of aprons with oil cloth pockets. I told her if she wants to sew up some, I can furnish the pockets by cutting them off the end of my tablecloth that I had to buy too long because I couldn’t buy it locally.