Boley Cook Book

Boley Cook Book

Friday, March 25, 2011

Quilters Part 9


Dresden Plate Quilt Block
Betty used very little money to make her home beautiful. She scrubbed the ancient smoke encrusted woodwork with ammonia and Spick & Span. She had hand me down furniture that she learned to upholster and reupholster time and again. She made the curtains herself, chopped an old library table and brass bed into parts and wired her own lamps. She learned to wall paper those 10 foot ceilings using a broom to hold the paper in place and a key on a string to keep the seams straight on the side walls.

She refinished the furniture Raymond found on a junk pile behind the Sellersburg business where he worked. He was too lazy the day her Grandmother Prather's beautiful bedroom furniture was offered to her to go get it. Was he forever in trouble!

And just as her grandmothers had taught her, she sat the old oak table with linens and silverware, filled the cut glass wedding present bowls with spring salads or bananas covered in chopped peanuts, and taught her family the etiquette of entertaining.

On special occasions she filled the punch bowl she bought for ten dollars full to the brim with strawberries from the garden. For Devona’s eighth grade graduation Sandy proudly carried the bowl from the kitchen to the dining room, slipped on a rug on the hard wood floor and the strawberries ended up on the ceiling, the wall paper and floor. That meant another trip to the garden for the second best berries of the day.

1 comment:

  1. I can't believe that you fell and spilled all the beautiful berries. I am sure that you felt bad and you may have gotten scolded also. I am truly enjoying the stories and pictures. They started out poor and learned to live on love. I guess that that is why Betty was so crafty because she learned to do things with what she had. I believe that my sister, Carolyn, also learned to do things on her own as she had to do for herself. Hope that Raymond is doing all right. Prayers continue for all of you.

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