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Does anyone darn socks anymore?
I'm not talking about muttering mild oaths at smelly footies. I mean the old-fashioned process of mending socks with thread, needle and light bulb.
In the dark, cold days of my youth, Mom never got to just relax. She blamed it on three boys ricocheting off the walls.
I looked everywhere for those three boys but couldn't find them. I asked my two brothers, but they hadn't seen them either. Too bad. It sounded like they were having way more fun than we were and we wanted to ask their advice.
Anyway, whenever Mom did manage a moment to sit, she picked up her big ol' basket of mending, which included a great number of socks that had sprouted holes. Mom slid a burned-out light bulb inside the sock, stretching the hole over the makeshift shaper. Then she sewed. She called it darning.
I remember wondering how she pushed the needle through the bulb. I didn't want to disturb her to ask because I feared she'd use my foot instead. I didn't want a sock sewn to my foot like Peter Pan's shadow.
I decided that if I ever ran into those three mysterious boys, I'd ask them. Mom said they could blow the roof right off the house; I figured they must know how to slice a needle through a light bulb without breaking the glass. Or maybe not. Mom said they shattered everything in sight.
Who were those boys?
Mom's sewing supplies included an empty peanut butter jar that had been refilled with buttons salvaged from old shirts turned into patches and rags. Recycling hadn't been invented in those days. We were too busy reusing everything.
Dad sorted all the nuts, bolts, screw, hooks, nails and other hardware saved from other projects into my youngest brother's empty baby food jars. It was a handy system. When Dad needed a 7/8-inch bolt or a 3/8 nut, he told me to fetch a creamed carrot or a strained peas. Since I knew more about food than hardware, it saved us both a lot of aggravation.
Buttons often popped off our shirts for no reason when we shinnied under fences, climbed trees, jumped creeks and straddled barbed wire on the farm. Mom sorted through the peanut butter jar for the buttons that most closely matched the missing buttons and sewed them on.
We three brothers found the button jar handy when we played Monopoly or Sorry or checkers. Buttons made great substitutes for all the game pieces that had come up missing. (I suspected that trio of boys Mom was always complaining about. She said they could lose anything.)
Mom and mending -- she must have loved it because she did so much of it, especially darning socks. I don't share that same fascination. When the holes in my socks get too big, I throw them out and buy new ones.
Maybe the reason nobody darns socks anymore is because today's light bulbs are all squiggly. Or maybe their moms didn't reveal to them how to pass the needle through glass either.
Or maybe someday I'll find those three boys. They'd know. I heard mom darn them.
— Stitch a line to Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.