Restoring a Family Heirloom

My great-great Aunt Susie Frazier was a fixture in Howard County, Maryland. She first lived in a house in Ellicott City and then later, she built a ranch house on family land a few miles away, in the middle of some tobacco fields which she rented to local farmers. This was apparently the main source of her income; she had never married. My memories of her were limited to the few times we visited her when she was very, very old (at least as I recall) and the ugly dresses she made for me that my mother made me wear at least once. Her house smelled like you would imagine an old lady's house would smell, she had an old pump organ that we were not allowed to touch and there was nothing to do. We endured these few visits with my mother, because apparently, my mom was one of her favorite grand-nieces (maybe her only?). Mom spent many happy memories as a child at her home when she lived 'in town'. Aunt Sue spoiled her, preferring my mother over her rambunctious little brother, Bucky. Mom has repeated the story many times over how Aunt Sue kept a chamber pot in the house for her, so she wouldn't have to go outside to use the toilet. Apparently that was a big deal, because she didn't do that for the brothers or their male cousins.

                                           
              

What made Aunt Sue particularly well-known was her skill as a seamstress. She supplemented her land-lease income by fashioning and altering clothing for local residents. She even sewed for the governor's family! I remember a quilt on my bed as a child that Aunt Sue made...I remember admiring the little tiny scraps of fabric and choosing my favorites. One scrap in particular reminded me of little cherries; it was my favorite and I made a game of trying to find it among so many others. Why I had so much time to lay under the covers and look at fabric, I'll never know, but it intrigued me. It must have caught on, because now, I LOVE fabric and have way too much of it stashed in my attic!

My mother recently gave me one of Aunt Sue's creations, a yo-yo spread, named because of the shape of the pieces, I suppose. In researching the famous toy yo-yo, it was so named in the 1920s and gained popularity thereafter, although other cultures played with a similar toy. I think this spread was made in the 1930s or 40s, so this makes sense. 

The offending repair

It needed some work. Over the years, of course little care was taken - it was tossed atop many a bed, and summarily bounced on, sent through the wash, hung out in the sun to dry, etc. The all-cotton fibers have taken a beating, and the connecting stitches have come undone in several places. There was also a hasty repair about 20 years ago, that incorporated some very bright fabric; um, it doesn't work. 

 

So, I've got it spread out on my dining room table, where I can enjoy the kaleidoscope of color and pattern while I work on it. I've had to discard a few yo-yo's that were beyond hope, absolutely threadbare. But 90 percent of it is salvageable and beautiful. I've calculated there are almost 3,000 yo-yos. It has taken me at least 15 minutes to trace, cut, needle a running stitch around the perimeter, pull the gathers in to form a smaller circle, iron it flat, and sew ONE circle/yo-yo in place! Giving Aunt Sue credit for  being an expert, and getting much faster at it than I, I figured it took her 300-450 hours to complete this project. And let me tell you, 30 minutes of sewing something very small by hand is exhausting. Although I've hit the 50 mark and wearing multi-focal contact lenses, my eyes were screaming at me for a break after a while. (I seem to remember some very thick spectacles in my memory of Aunt Sue, now that I think about it!) But I cannot imagine her working on this for more than an hour at a time. If she worked at it 9 hours a day, it would have taken her ten weeks of full time work. Certainly it filled a year of after-dinner stitching to the sounds of Fibber McGee and Molly, and The Lone Ranger on the Philco radio. Sounds kinda nice, doesn't it?

I've also been inspired to try making one of my own. It's taken some trial and error, lots of error, and I've temporarily given up while I repair the real thing, but it's been a fun project learning how to do this. I have found very thin cotton to work best. 

The general steps are as follows:

1. Create a 3" circle pattern from lightweight cardboard (like a cereal box).
2. Trace onto several layers of fabric; cut many at a time (but, I'm not trying to cut all 3,000 circles at once!).
3. Stack alike fabrics together.
4. Using a quilting needle, sew a running stitch around the perimeter of the circle, about 1/4" from the edge, with a knot in the end of the thread.
5. Without knotting or cutting the end of the thread, pull it so that it gathers the circle around a finger. Knot it off after it is gathered and pulled tightly, creating the "yo-yo."
6. Press with a hot iron, to flatten.
7. After arranging the colors and designs, sew the yo-yos together at four points, creating a 'square' of 16 (8 of each pattern). 
8. After sewing 169 squares of 16 each, stitch them together in an appealing pattern to make a bedspread that will fit a queen size bed. 

Among the hundreds of faded vintage fabrics, I have found the ugly gray dress...still searching for the elusive cherries. So many pretty fabrics. I'm really thankful I have this treasure.

The backside (see that ugly gray gingham?)

CRABS!

I grew up in Baltimore, hon, and when you do that, you eat a lot of crabs in the summer. I remember with fondness, picnic tables spread with newspaper in my Aunt Elizabeth's backyard in Ellicott City, Maryland. All the grandparents, aunts, uncles and distant cousins would pile their cars in the yard, unload their bring-your-own-beer, while Uncle Earl dumped bushels of steamed blue crabs on the tables. As a child, I never questioned how or where these crabs were prepared, nor did I appreciate the effort put into all the side items that went with: corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, gallons of beverages, desserts. I just remember running around her house and yard, away from our city row-house life, and feeling special. Eating crab is such a monumental effort; I don't know how the adults in our midst had the time or patience to teach us youngsters how to dissect one for consumption. Maybe we were born with the ability to do so, like an instinct. But it seems to me that I was able to find the meat inside a crab, and spend hours on many a hot Independence Day and have enough.

Other memories of eating crabs: I was TERRIFIED of eating the "dead man." No, there was not a rotting corpse or his body parts in the bushel basket with the crustaceans. "Dead man" is the term that was used to describe the feathery gills/lungs that the crabs use to extract oxygen from the sea water. I was warned every time I ate crab, not to eat it, or I would DIE. Literally. Now, I'm dubious that it was quite that serious of a culinary infraction. I really started questioning this when I realized that people (in Baltimore) eat soft-shell crab sandwiches - which is the whole crab, eyes, legs, guts, etc. - all the time and don't perish. Surely the dead man is in there still, right?

And "mustard" is really crab poop. Some people love it, but I think it is disgusting. So I would gingerly scrape it out of every cavity and crevice in the body and be quite careful not to let it touch anything that went in my mouth.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I was appalled by a "pig-pickin'," a Barbaric sort of summer ritual where a complete pig is slow roasted all day, and then you go and pull the meat off the carcass. Yuck. (The meat IS tasty, but I prefer fetching it from a serving dish.) But then I considered the summer feasts we enjoyed tearing the legs off of bottom-dwelling garbage collectors of the sea, and didn't judge so harshly. I guess every culture has its nasty culinary delights.

So, along with my two trusty Virginia Beach natives, we steamed some live crabs (males only, please) early this summer and introduced our friends to our favorite summertime treat. Steaming crabs is not for the faint of heart - there is the sad detail of putting those lovely bright blue and gray critters, so desperate to live, reaching out with their vice-grip claws for your hands as you squeeze them with the tongs, in a pot of steaming water and vinegar, sprinkling them with a generous portion of Old Bay seasoning, and putting the lid on their sad lives. They claw away, trying to escape, until after about 30 minutes, they turn a lovely shade of bright red-orange and stop moving.

Then you must dump them unceremoniously on the newspaper strewn picnic table, pass out a knife and a crab mallet to each person, along with a stack of napkins and dive in. The verbal instructions go something like this: "First, you tear off the claws. Then the legs, but be careful to pull firmly from the joint between leg and body; then you can get the backfin meat from the body cavity." Sounds awful when I put it that way.

The requisite corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes go around the table. Beer, lemonade and sweet tea is enjoyed. Since we did this at dinner time, we are still sitting around the table outside at 10 pm, pounds of crabs left untouched. Apparently, a bushel of crabs feeds 10 Baltimore and Virginia Beach natives, but is way too much for novices. We had a ton leftover. So Grandma came the next day and picked all those leftover crabs and made crab cakes for lunch. So delish.

There wasn't much 'refinement' (at least by Southern cotillion and debutant standards) in my mid-Atlantic urban upbringing. But I am so grateful for the rich experience of this one Chesapeake Bay summertime tradition.