There was a time when women and girls
never wore pants or blue jeans, nor overalls. A flowered dress, perhaps
hand made from curtain material or other household fabric was more normal
fair. Here we find Catrina in a dress just like that. I happen to know
that Catrina and her Mother and sisters sew much of their own clothes and
this particular dress with its orange flowers was just such a one.
We find a little girl sitting on the steps leading to the kitchen door.
She sits among work shoes and boots with a rain gear jacket on the door.
This entry area led to a first room, which was a dual purposed place. It
served not only as a “mud room” to keep the dirt from coming into the
house, but there usually was a laundry tub located in it, and a sink for
everyone to wash up in before eating. You then walked directly into the
kitchen. In many of the smaller farmhouses the kitchen was where all the
meals were served and there was no dining room in the house. The main meal
of the day was at noon and it was referred to as “dinner”. Supper was a
much lighter meal, usually made up of left-overs from dinner and eaten
often after dark, as the men needed every daylight hour they could use to
accomplish their work. This was particularly so at spring planting and
fall harvest and still holds true today on many small farms.
Often a young girl like Catrina might be asked by her Mother to go ring
the dinner bell to call the men in from the fields. Here we find her
“stealing” (from her morning chores) a few moments as she sits in amongst
shoes, boots, and rain gear to read one of her favorite stories The
Hobbit. This Christian themed book was the predecessor to the Lord of the
Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. A favorite book when it just came out in
the 1930s it has recently been revived as a series of movies which has
received popular and critical acclaim.
But for now we are thrown back into the past and a little girl’s fantasy
world, where she escapes the hard work of farm life with kerchief on her
head and immersed in imagination.
