When I look at a pioneer woman’s picture the first thing I notice is the apron. I don’t need to look into the woman’s eyes or look for wealth to know her importance to the family. Pioneer women wore aprons like Royality wore crowns. However, unlike the Royal Court , these women lived a life of unbearable difficulty, suffered heartache at the loss of their children and sacrificed personal happiness to keep the family together. The pioneer woman’s wealth was her family and she raised them on her aprons strings. My Granny was one of those strong women .
Granny’s apron was a cotton flour sack opened at the seams and tied around the waist by an attached waistband. The apron was made from a fifty pound flour sack so that it would drop below the knee. As well as I can remember she only had one apron at any time. Every night after the dishes were washed and the floor was swept she would wash the apron and hang it to dry for the next day. Sometimes, it would be washed during the day and put back on wet.
Granny’s apron was her second pair of hands. She would pull the apron up into a basket to carry eggs from the coop, berries we picked in the Spring, summer vegetables from the garden, firewood for the wood cookstove, or carry chopped corn to her chickens. Whatever needed carried was carried in Granny’s apron. In the summer she would sit in her wood rocking chair and break string beans she had carried back from the garden. At Christmas the apron was a giant gift box she would open on the kitchen table. Unlike today, food was the usual Christmas gift. The same apron was used to wipe sweaty faces and dabbed in kerosene to heal all wounds. We all learned to walk by holding on to Granny,s apron tail as she cooked or cleaned. Sometimes more than one tot had hold of Granny’s apron and she would tell us to ” walk or let go but she had things to do”.
In the spring and early summer the creek would flood the low-water slab bridge . It was Granny’s job to get us all across the creek. Making as many trips as there were kids in tow, she would carry smaller kids on each hip while two of the older ones held on to her apron. Often the rising water would make us fall but Granny would stop and let us get a firm footing before continuing on across. Being barefoot and hanging on to Granny’s apron was a blessing!