The Feedsack Dress

Who are the feedsack kids?

In The Feedsack Dress, the mean queen calls the students who transfer from one-room rural schools to the town’s junior high the feedsack kids. She uses the term to label them outsiders, classmates to ignore or ridicule. She directs her disdain at Gail, the only girl in ninth grade in who wears a dress made from the colorful cotton sacks that had contained chicken feed.

Gail copes with the problems of being an outsider in 1949 in rural Missouri as the whole country adapts to new technology and urbanization. This blog tells more about that time, but the story of an outsider taking on the mean queen lives in the past, present, and future.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

 

Glimpses of childhood in China today

Ever since I gave up digging my way to China, I’ve wanted to visit there. I finally made it this fall. 

One of the many things that fascinated me is how parents treasure their children, especially their sons. To be more exact, parents treasure the one child the government permits them to have. The party-ruled Chinese government began restricting the great majority of families to one child more than 20 years ago in order to curb the soaring population.

Often in the streets or parks you see a small child surrounded by four or five adults—the parents, the grandparents, aunts, or uncles. They shower attention and gifts on the household’s little emperor. Gradually officials became aware of the danger of a nation of spoiled brats, so they now encourage parents to send their single child to kindergarten, what we call pre-school, at age three so that they will learn to play with others. And get a head start on their education.

These kindergartens cost a lot, but parents and family members sacrifice to send their children there and give them the advantages that come from a good education. We visited a boarding kindergarten for three-, four-, and five-year-olds. The parents bring their children to school on Monday morning and pick them up on Friday afternoon. It’s hard to imagine how difficult this must be for parents and children, but many families regard it as their duty.

The kindergarten had the kinds of decorations you see in classrooms in the States. Each teacher (all young women) had an electronic keyboard and a blackboard. Each classroom had approximately 35 children. All wore coats in the unheated rooms. They sat at tiny desks, and they napped and slept in little beds in crowded dorm rooms. They greeted us with great enthusiasm, turning healthy, smiling faces to us or rushing to the open windows to peek over at us. Irresistibly cute.

Wherever they are, kids are kids. 

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Losing China

During World War II the United States fought with China against Japan. Americans felt great sympathy and friendship as they saw news reels of the terrible damage Japan’s army inflicted, read of General Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers courageous defense of the poorly equipped Chinese army, and listened to pleas for support from the American-educated wife of China’s leader, General Chiang Kai-shek. 

During the war and for years after, if American children complained about meals, parents reminded them of the children starving in China. Told the war-torn country sat on the other side of the world, many of us too little to understand tried to dig our way to China.

The end of WWII led not to peace and prosperity in China but to civil war. American attempts at mediation failed. So did the general we backed. Chiang Kai-shek and much of his army fled to the island of Taiwan in 1949. In October communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. He allied himself with the Soviet Union, our former ally and primary enemy. 

Everyone said we had lost China. Who was to blame? Were they traitors? Accusations flew. Some of the wildest came from Senator Joseph McCarthy. He claimed the loss and even greater threats to our liberty came from communists hidden among our political and intellectual leaders. With plenty of help, he plunged the country into some of the most disgraceful days in American history, a witch hunt for communist sympathizers and the portrayal of anyone who had ever attended a communist meeting or read a communist publication as a traitor.

For several years false accusations, fiction presented as fact, and hysterical fear destroyed reputations and lives.

When we lost China, we lost a piece of our democratic selves.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Talking about writing

KOPN’s Jill Sheets, host of Penquin Tracks, interviewed me as part of a series on authors who write for middle grade and young adult readers. My credits include The Feedsack Dress, three YA nonfiction books, and educational materials for various levels.

Sheets broadcast the 25-minute interview in July and again in September, which is One Read Month here. She plans to post it on the radio station’s website (www.kopn.org/archives).

The 25-minute interview covered such topics as my writing process (I think before I write), the differences in writing nonfiction and fiction (nonfiction requires accuracy, fiction demands truth), what I’m writing now for both children and adults, and the best advice on writing I ever received.

Many people—editors, readers, strangers—offer advice on writing, and I listen. I can always learn something new, and I can usually tell what to ignore. Here are three deceptively simple bits of wisdom I’ve heard and said again and again.

1. Don’t give up (particularly in writing and marketing fiction).
2. Know your readers (particularly in writing nonfiction).
3. Read what you want to write.

If you write fiction, take a look at my report from Killer Nashville (a mystery writers’ conference) on why agents and editors stop reading a manuscript. Go to my website (http://carolynmulford.com) and click on News.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Wearing feedsack dresses

Writer Eva Ridenour sent me this recollection of wearing feedsack dresses.

My two sisters and I all had feedsack dresses that our mother made from the same pink flowered pattern. It had a plain white insert in the front and we wore them only when we were "dressed up." I have a picture of the three of us when I was about six or seven years old and my youngest sister was about two.

Although we were town kids dad raised chickens and hogs therefore, he needed to buy food at the feed store. Mom always went along to pick out the kind of print for the feed and saved up until she had enough to make the dresses.

I remember wearing them until I was about ten. Then I think feed started coming in paper sacks, or else she got too busy doing other things to make anymore feed sack dresses.

 

Starting school in the heat

Thanks to air conditioning, schools now start in August rather than waiting for September’s cooler weather as we did in the mid-20^th century. Living on the farm, I experienced air conditioning mostly by going to cowboy movies on Saturday afternoons and musicals on Sunday afternoon.

Even in September students—grade school, high school, and college—often had trouble staying awake in the afternoons. Teachers would open the high windows and the door in each classroom first thing in the morning to cool off the room and bring in any breeze. Some students used the paper fans passed out by funeral homes to produce their own breezes.

In grade school the heat didn’t stop us from playing full tilt at noon. We had 15 minutes to eat whatever we brought for lunch (no refrigeration) and 35 minutes to have fun before the teacher rang the hand bell. It warned us we had 10 minutes to run to the outhouses (one for girls, one for boys) and to line up at the well for a drink of cold water.

Our steaming bodies must have raised the room temperature several degrees when we came inside. The teacher would read us a chapter of a book to quiet us down. About 2:30 everyone woke up enough to run outside for another 15 minutes of play. That kept us awake until school ended at 4:00, when we walked up to a mile home to do chores.

No wonder kids went to bed early and slept well in those days.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Reading under and in the trees

Summer meant lots of work on the farm, but it also offered time to read, especially if I took my book beyond the sound of my mother’s call and out of sight of my little sister. 

When I didn’t have much time, I’d sprawl on an old blanket under a maple tree in our front yard. If I had a couple hours free, I’d sneak away from the house into the pasture and lean against a huge elm tree. Usually the dog would lead my pesky little sister to me.

I found a better hiding place in a cottonwood tree bya clear running stream too small to be called a creek (pronounced crick). I could climb up a few feet and wedge myself between the branches. I wasn’t visible unless someone stood right below me and looked up.

Many of the small library’s books were classics or simply old. Fortunately I loved historical novels. Here are some of the authors and titles I remember.

R. D. Blackmore: Lorna Doone   (I reread this 600-page book before a trip to England a few years ago and marveled that I’d read the whole thing at 13 or 14)

Pearl Buck: The Good Earth   (on my list to reread)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompei   (good story, ponderous writing)

Willa Cather: O Pioneers, My Antonia, The Song of the Lark   (still worth reading) 

Winston Churchill: Richard Carvell, The Crisis    (huge in his day; forgotten now)

James Fennimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans     (clunky writing, intriguing content)

Alfred Leland Crabb:  A Mockingbird Sang at Chickamauga    (riveting then)

Charles Dana: Two Years Before the Mast    (goes well with Moby Dick)

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist   (Dickens will live forever)

Lloyd C. Douglas: The Robe, Magnificent Obsession, The Big Fisherman   (wildly popular at one time but mostly forgotten)

Edna Ferber: So Big       (better for an adult than an adolescent)

Zane Grey: Riders of the Purple Sage    (one of many fast-paced tales)

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter   (read mostly in lit classes today)

Herman Melville: Moby Dick     (everyone knows the whale, few read the classic)

Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind      (a category in itself)

Kenneth Roberts: Northwest Passage     (strong historical narrative)

Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, Treasure Island   (classics)

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair       (neglected classic)

Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi  (I’ve never stopped reading Twain)

Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur    (heavy going today; you need to like history a lot)

Owen Wister: The Virginian      (period piece but timeless characters)

Harold Bell Wright: The Shepherd of the Hills, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (dated writing but interesting portrait of a time and place—the Ozarks)

I never enjoyed books more than when I read them in the shade of a tree.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

How I learned to hate sewing

Steaming July days remind me of how much I hated sewing as a child and how much I love air conditioning today.

My mother always insisted that I take sewing as one of my 4-H projects. Back then practically everyone sewed.

The first year project I didn’t mind so much. We made simple things like tea towels and pillowcases to teach us to sew a straight seam without the machine’s needle going through a finger. The hard parts were pinning the hems so they would be straight and threading the bobbin.

Each summer the required items became more difficult and more time consuming. The clothing started with aprons and basic play clothes. We practiced making them from the less pretty feedsacks. Inevitably I progressed to Sunday dresses (ones made from the new synthetic we bought in town) and, the item I hated most, slips made from a slippery synthetic that radiated heat.

Sitting at the sewing machine without even a fan on a hot, humid summer afternoon was bad enough, but other steps in the process were even worse. It began with

draping the tissue-paper pieces of the pattern over my body to adjust it to fit. That involved a lot of my turning and stretching while my mother pinned. Once she had the various pieces of the pattern adjusted, we pinned them to the cloth. The challenge was to pin them on so that the pieces would match in the end product while using as little of the cloth as possible. Tricky stuff.

I dreaded cutting out the cloth. An errant cut could ruin the whole thing. The cutting done, we did another fitting, usually with me standing on a kitchen chair. Then the sewing, And more fitting. And taking out any seams that weren’t straight. And more fitting. 

By the time my mother and the 4-H leader declared any garment perfect, I hated it.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Hunting frogs

Some people are cooling off from temperatures around 100 degrees by going frog hunting. The season runs from July 1 to October 31 in Missouri. You need a fishing or hunting permit—which one depends on your choice of weapons.

I don’t think we had a frog-hunting season when I grew up. Frog legs rarely made it to the table. My father and uncle told tales about their boyhood exploits on hot summer nights. His family enjoyed the variation in their diet.

By the middle of the 20^th century, not many people thought about frogs as food. Teenage boys would go to ponds or rivers, swing their flashlights back and forth until they saw a frog’s eyes reflected in the light, and practice their marksmanship with 22 rifles. Most saw frogs as interesting targets, not food. 

On rare occasions my father would yearn for fried frog legs and would go to our pond to catch bullfrogs with his hands or spear them with a pitchfork.

My mother refused to prepare any wild gamel—frog, fish, squirrel, rabbit—for the skillet, but she would cook and eat it. As I recall, frog tasted better than squirrel or rabbit. 

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Vanilla, strawberry, or cicada?

Vanilla, strawberry, or cicada?

No commercial ice cream equals what my family churned with milk and cream from our cows and eggs from our hens.

Perhaps the long anticipation intensified the flavor. We had to go to town to buy a block of ice, bring it home covered with an old blanket, and run to the barn for cattle salt while my  father put the ice in a burlap sack and beat it into small pieces with the flat side of the ax. The half hour or so it took to churn the ice cream by hand seemed like hours. So did the time it had to set before we could eat it.

My mother always made vanilla. We topped it with chocolate syrup or whatever fruit we’d picked: strawberries from our garden, blackberries from fence rows, peaches from our tree. Wonderful.

No one every thought to add cicadas, but that’s what Sparky’s, a local ice cream parlor, did two weeks ago.  The 13-year cicadas emerged from the ground and local gourmands gave their recipes to the local newspapers. The crew at Sparky’s like to come up with original flavors, so staff members brought in specimens from their yards, boiled them, and developed a recipe.

The newspaper announced cicada ice cream would be available the next day. I wasn’t tempted, but so many other people were that the flavor sold out immediately. Before capturing cicadas for another batch, Sparky’s checked with the health department. Oddly enough, the local health code doesn’t cover the preparation of cicadas. The department didn’t ban cicada ice cream. It didn’t encourage selling it either.

Sparky’s decided to retire the flavor. I suspect the cicadas harvested from lawns lacked the outstanding flavor of our freshly picked fruit. 

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Noticing women's history

Women’s History Month ends today, and I’m guessing most people missed it. About the only thing noted by the media was the passing of one of our political pioneers, Geraldine Ferraro.

She broke ground by going from teacher to prosecuting attorney to congresswoman, a small but growing trend in the 1970s. At that time the House and Senate lacked facilities for women, such as bathrooms near the chamber floors. She earned space in the history books by being the first woman selected by a major party to run for vice president. In 1984 and for many more years, that was remarkable.

She and Walter Mondale lost, but her knowledge of issues, wit, and poise proved women could play with the men. Many women entered politics because Gerry Ferraro showed success was possible. This must be hard to comprehend for young women and girls who watched Hillary Clinton almost capture the presidential nomination and Sarah Palin run for vice president in 2008. But we still haven’t had a woman elected president or vice president.

Until well past the middle of the 20^th century, girls almost always ran for class secretary rather than class president and women almost always worked for a candidate rather than being the candidate. Women still have not reached parity in politics or in pay.

Right now women’s most dramatic march toward equality is taking place in the Middle East. Recently we’ve witnessed women participating in protests for freedom in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran. These women risk their lives to improve their personal status and to create a more equal society.

We’ve made greater progress in this country, but the fight for equality lasts for generations. American women fought for decades to gain the rights to own property and to vote. Progress requires persistence.

—Carolyn Mulford