The Minnesota Farm Woman

I was probably not Mrs. Johnson’s favorite student, but perhaps I was one of her more memorable ones.  Mrs. Johnson was one of our high school Home Economics teachers who taught sewing, knitting, crocheting, and all that crafty stuff. A tiny petite woman who always had a smile (or perhaps was gritting her teeth over students like me) probably would have forgotten me altogether if it weren’t for that darn zipper. Each of us was to make our own garment from start to finish in our junior year. Girls only, of course, because that’s just how it was back in those days.  The boys got to be somewhere in the school’s basement doing fun things like woodworking and auto repair. I was stuck on the second floor with that stupid zipper and a roomful of young women who actually liked to sew. I come from a long line of sewers. Perhaps I was switched at birth or some sort of genetic anomaly, but my project seemed to be doomed from the start. I couldn’t figure out where the bias was.  I didn’t even know what a bias was. I poked myself with the pins and left spots of blood on the fabric.  Being left-handed with only right-handed scissors available, my fabric resembled something worse than a monkey could do with one hand tied behind his back and a banana in the other.  Then there was that horrible zipper. Mine was extra long. The longest back-waist measurement Mrs. Johnson had ever seen, she said.  “You’re just so…..tall!” she said, after a pause.  I was a  5′ 9″ Gulliver who wanted to  do be anywhere else but in a room full of sew-crazy Lilliputians.  One by one, each girl finished her project.  There were “oohs” and “ahs” galore.  I grimly kept my nose to the grindstone of that special zipper foot that was supposed to be somehow attached to the sewing machine. Changing out a transmission down in the shop class was probably easier than figuring out how to attach that zipper foot. It would pop off midway through each attempt, breaking the thread and causing me to again rip out the seam. And again. And again.  I made about ten attempts to get it in.  That’s nine times ripping out that zipper, but one time getting it right.  Well, almost right.  It had a few puckers and was a little crooked, but it was in.  We were encouraged to wear our garments to show them off, and I wore mine for the first and last time the next day.  I had to borrow a sweater because the seams started coming apart, right around the area of the zipper.  Mrs. Johnson, bless her petite little heart, gave me a B that semester.  It was surely more than I deserved.  I know you are thinking that there has got to be a little “twist” to the end of this story.  Perhaps this Farm Woman now makes all of her own clothes or moonlights in a zipper factory, or something like that.   Well, all I can tell you is that there is a little sewing kit around here somewhere, and the last time a button needed to be sewn back on, HE did it!