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Friday, 05 February 2010

The Depression Coat

By Nancy Leitz

In 1932, our family was living in Yeadon, Pennsylvania and hard times were upon us. Many of our friends in our little "twin house" neighborhood were out of work and anything we could do to improve our situation was done.

I don't really remember a great deal about this because I was four years old and as many other people do, I can recall only the things that were very important to me at that time, like going to South Philadelphia with my Dad to all the Irish wakes the two of us attended. (See Oh! You're John's Girl to understand this phenomenon.)

What I do remember is that we lived in a nice middle class neighborhood in St. Louis Parish and our life was a mixture of trying to "make it" both materially and spiritually. The very same can be said of our neighbors. We were a fairly tight-knit group, according to my mother, despite the fact that we included many different ethnic groups and so many diverse religions that it was hard for mother to remember when we discussed the coat incident many years later.

What happened was this: My brother Jack was 10 years oldin 1932, and mother took him to Gimbels Department Store at 8th and Market in Philadelphia for a new winter coat. He was measured and fitted for a beautiful caramel-colored and beautifully made camel hair coat with six brown leather buttons down the front. It was splendid because, being the first born, nothing was too good for our Jack.

So, the first Sunday after the big purchase, Jack strutted down the aisle at the nine o'clock mass at St. Louis. Jack didn't attend the parish school because he had started at the public school before St. Louis was founded so, to one and all at that mass, it was a real occasion because here was a "Public" attending Mass in a very expensive coat and doing exactly what he wanted to do, which was to attract attention.

He made certain that he waited in the communion line as long as he could so that there was no parishioner in that church who did not know that Jack McGarvey had a splendid camel hair coat.

Now it is 1934, and the coat no longer fits Jack. Times are tougher than before and pride goes out the window as our neighbor asks my mother if she would loan the coat to her family so that her daughter, Dolores, would have a nice warm coat for that winter. Of course, Mother agrees and even offers to set the wonderful brown leather buttons over to the "girls' side.” This was done and Dolores wore the coat to the Yeadon Presbyterian Church that winter. I'll never know how she felt about that.

Skip ahead to 1936, and my brother, Bob (My Brother the Pope) in now in line for the coat. The buttons are returned to the boys' side by Dolores' mom, but the brown leather buttons are getting a bit shabby so it is decided to replace them with brown "bone" buttons that are not half as nice as the leather ones.

Bob is so busy donning his pope suit and conducting funerals for all the animals who died and needed services, he doesn't really notice but by this time, I'm sure the neighbors do. Yes, I'm certain that they noticed. Nothing got past them in those days. No Television, no money, no car. Yeah, they noticed!

Well, that dreaded day in 1938 arrived. As the leaves started to fall in October and a chill was in the air, I arrived home from school one day to find my mother unwrapping THE coat from the cocoon it had been stored in for the las  year and a half. I was shocked to see itbecause I had secretly prayed a novena that she would forget about the coat and I was counting on the Lord answering my prayers.

But, there it was - the camel hair coat just as I and the all the rest of the people who lived in our small town remembered. I suppose my mother had prayed harder or had a more compelling reason to want the coat to have survived the moths so that I could wear it that winter. She had probably made two novenas.

About a week was spent "rehabbing" the coat. Mother bought new buttons at Mrs. Day's Notions Store and took the coat with her so that the new thread she bought at the same time would exactly match the caramel color of the coat.

I watched as she snipped the old buttons off and prepared to sew up the old button holes and make new ones on the girls' side. Oh, how I despised that coat and wanted nothing more than to have disappear forever so I would be spared the embarrassment of having to wear it to church. I just knew that the whole town was waiting with bated breath for me to appear in the "neighborhood" coat as I had come to think of it, so they could tease me about wearing a boys coat.

I don't know if they had teased Dolores about it, but I doubted it because she did not go to St. Louis and that is where I had to wear it and that is where practically the whole town went to church and that made all the difference.

Well, the first really cold Sunday came around and the coat was on the hanger just waiting for me to put it on for mass. I stalled and stalled and finally could not put it off any longer. I had to wear the dreaded coat. I struggled into it and buttoned the bone buttons, then turned and looked in the hall mirror at myself.

I can still remember that reflection today. Not the coat as much as the little girl with the big tears rolling down her cheeks who had six long blocks to walk to St. Louis and was thinking about how many people she would meet who KNEW it was a boys' coat she was wearing.

Somehow I got through that long trip to church and back, tears streaming all the way and speaking to no one although several tried to speak to me. I was too mortified and ran as fast as I could to get home.

I stumbled in the door and found my Mother just hanging up the telephone. She had found out that I had been crying and now she actually saw how distressed I was. She helped me off with the coat and took it away to the closet. To this day I have never seen that coat again.

Shortly after that, we took the trolley car to the city and went to Gimbels. Mother bought me a lovely blue coat with a darker blue velvet collar. As I rode home with the coat in a big box on the seat next to me, I vowed to think of some way to repay her. I did that by wearing the blue coat far beyond the time that it actually fit me. By the time I gave it up the sleeves were very short and my dress had began to show below the hemline of the coat. I had taken very good care of it, though, and we put it away.

A few years later, it looked wonderful on my sister, Jed...

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

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