Long time, no post...sorry. I know - you're tired of "Fire, fire." My job has really gotten in the way of my blogging. :)

I was reminded the other day of a story my mother told me. My mother worked at a men's pants factory in Aberdeen, which may have been, at one time, the largest employer in town. My mother was the overseer of a "line" of women who had a quota to make every week. Some of the women came from very poor backgrounds; they didn't own a car and were very happy to pay a small amount for someone with a car to pick them up for work and take them home. Mary was one such person. Mary was a very hard worker. She didn't own a sewing machine at home, but my mother said she sometimes made her own dresses BY HAND. Now, I've made dresses with a sewing machine, but the thought of making one with just a needle and thread puts me in awe of someone who would do that. I guess you do what you have to in order to survive. Mary, along with 3 or 4 other women, regularly rode with another woman to and from work. Mary's husband, Emmett, who sometimes worked when he wasn't drunk, was unpredictable, at best. One day, as the car filled with women drove up to take Mary home, there was Emmett, sitting on the front steps, as my mother put it, "as naked as a jaybird." Right there - for all to see. Mary must have loved Emmett a whole lot. Another time, Mary had done all the laundry, hung it out to dry, brought it in, starched and ironed everything, and put it away neatly in a dresser drawer. Emmett came home drunk that night, opened the dresser drawer, and urinated all over the freshly-done laundry.