Walking Home

When I was a freshman at Woodruff High School, we lived on North Jefferson and I walked the 10 or so blocks to and from school. On the way home, I often encountered three grade school aged kids, a boy and two girls returning home from Greely Grade School which right across the street from our apartment house. The smallest girl was always walking up in the grass.

I was shy at the time (I’ve gotten over that, thank goodness), and didn’t really know how to handle saying ‘hi’ every time we met, so often I would cross the street and walk down the other side so I didn’t have to say hello. Seems silly now, but that’s how it was. During my sophomore year we moved  to Dechman Street so I no longer met them when I was walking home.

Occasionally I’d see a dark-haired, older boy going into the house where the three kids lived, but I merely noted the fact and didn’t think any more about it.

Fast-forward a year.

Ronnie Marshall was going to run for school president and he noticed that I was always drawing, so he thought I might be an addition to his campaign committee. The time of the first meeting arrived (February 1954), and Buddy Curtis was to pick me up and take me to another committee member’s house; I think she lived on North Madison across from the Episcopal Church. Someday I’m going to remember to drive down that street and see if my memory is right or if it’s all haywire.

On the way, Buddy was to pick up some boy who was playing in the Woodruff High Jazz Band. There was another boy in the pick-up truck, but I can’t remember who he was. He and Buddy kept talking about how this guy they were to pick up was so funny!

We waited just awhile and out came a guy from the school, and we four (in the front seat of a pick-up) headed the few blocks to the meeting place. All evening I noticed the “funny” boy, and he was indeed funny. Kept everyone in stitches.

I looked for him at school the next week, but didn’t see him. The next meeting of the committee came, and we managed to be sitting next to each other all evening and in the back of the pick-up on the way to my house.

Fast forward again.

The funny fellow turned out to be Jim Fyke. We’ve been married 54 years now, and he still keeps me in stitches.

The three kids I met on Madison Street were his brother and sisters, Gary, Mary Ellen and Barbara. The boy entering the house was probably him.

Soon I was a frequent visitor at 1209 NE Madison. We dated for 5 years before we could afford to get married.

Fast forward yet again.

At the gathering of the five Fyke siblings in June 2013, Barbara (the youngest, the one who walked in the grass) said that the three of them often talked about the pretty girl they met on the street. She and Mary Ellen noticed that the girl had a leather purse! And a camelhair coat! And they wondered if she were nice or snooty. I had no idea they even noticed me, let alone remembered so many details.

You know, I can never tell teen agers that their high school loves are just passing infatuations, because Jim and I fell in love when we were just 17 and 15, and I can’t imagine having lived the last 59 years (54 married, 5 dating) without him.

Sewing - First, Last and Always

My favorite hobby:

My first experience with a needle, thread and fabric was with my Aunt Corrine's rag bag and darning needles. She must have been desperate to find something to keep the three of us busy (Joe was too little then to join in the project.) I don't suppose we made anything recognizable, but we really had fun. I think Joy and I were about five or six and Herman would have been three or four.

I think we played with that rag bag more than once, and probably progressed to smaller-eyed needles. What we all remember most though is the time one of us carelessly 'lost' a needle in the easy chair. Joy's dad, my Uncle Eldon, plopped down in that chair to read the paper, and popped up just as fast. He was MAD! That was the only time he spanked us, and I think he spanked us all....including our friend Marchia who had the misfortune of playing with us that day.

The only person who could always find a needle in an easy chair was my husband. To this day I am VERY careful that I don't lose a needle, because it will ALWAYS be he who finds it.

My first real sewing project was a little dresser scarf to embroider. My Grandma Hammond was always embroidering pillow cases and scarves and she must have got this project for me. I still have it around somewhere. The sewing is bad, but I'm sure it looked good to me. I never finished it.

Through my youth I was always designing clothing for my dolls. There was a variety store across the street from my house, and calicos were about $.29 a yard. I would buy a quarter yard of several of them and then try to make pretty dresses. It was about then that I discovered that pants were not that easy to make!

At that time (early 50s) we girls all took home ec. My teacher was Elsie McCluggage at Woodruff High School, and she had us all make a card-table sized cloth out of Indian head fabric trimmed with hemstitching. For some odd reason, I chose to use yellow cloth with brown thread for the hemstitching. Those have never been my favorite colors, and I've always wished I had chosen something prettier. I got a B on the project because my knots were too big. It's been 51 years and I'm still using the table cloth.

My mother was the managing type, and always wanted everything done right. I would never let her teach me to sew, because I didn't want her to tell me what to do. I eventually decided to make myself a housecoat WITHOUT HER HELP. I'm sure she thought I was crazy, but I did it. I got a pattern that included piping and buttonholes, and I got the whole thing finished. I used that housecoat for years. It was some kind of symbol of triumphing over my mother.

For my graduation from Bradley University, my gift was a new portable Slant-Needle Singer Sewing machine. It was and is wonderful. I would be using it today as my major machine if it weren't for the fact that it didn't have the zigzag feature. No machine ever made better buttonholes.

I made all my maternity clothes and clothes for all the kids as they came along. Eventually I made daughter Robin's wedding gown, which taught me that I didn't know diddly squat about sewing a hem in chiffon.

Over the years I have made innumerable quilts. I like the hand piecing, but doing the actual quilting is too big a job, and I get it done by others. I've also made many large banners and such for our church, as well as a banner for the Sewing Guild, and I'm always surprised to see they still use it.

My most recent projects are purses made from silk ties, snuggly slippers, aprons, and girls' skirts made from old jeans with a ruffle of pretty cotton to make them flirty. Oh yes, I also finally made a sock monkey and have taught several sock monkey making classes. Several of my students had never sewn a lick, and it it's always 'interesting' to teach someone to knot a thread and how to make a running stitch without poking the needle down one side, pulling the threat taut, and poking the needle back up the other side. I never knew how much my left hand does when I'm sewing until I tried to teach someone the basics.

Today I have an awesome fabric stash. A year ago I thinned the herd by one third, but you'd never know it. I love those tubs and boxes of fabric! Going through one is like a trip down or up memory lane, and I'm sure the mental exercise has staved off Alzheimer's for me.

As any sewer can tell you, there is nothing as rewarding as completing a project that is so well done that everyone thinks you bought it. And it's so easy to forget all the projects that didn't turn out that way.