copyright by Bettina Network, inc. 2012 for Marceline Donaldson
Estate Sales are one of my passions. I have been involved with them since about 1965, having owned an Auction Gallery in the Sheraton Ritz Hotel years ago and have barely missed a weekend without some stop at an estate sale in some city.
I haven’t been to a mall nor any other kind of retail store spending money for a very long time and we are doing quite well, thank you. My money goes further and the ‘things’ that I have acquired are much higher quality than I could afford otherwise.
In spite of that long history, it never ceases to amaze me when I find something extraordainary – like this weekend.
Saturday was full of stopping at different sales in the Greater Boston area. My best find was in Belmont where I bought a basket full of stockings – not knowing if they would fit, but knowing they were all still in their original plastic wrappers and I know enough people of different sizes that I could share what I couldn’t use.
Going over the packages – which cost about fifty cents each – there were several under the “Sears” name. Therein was my amazement. They were called “Cling-alon”. Now, as old as I am and having seen as much as I have seen in life, I had never come across stockings which one could wear out to an event, find a run in one leg, change that leg with a “replacement nylon” and keep going. Did women have these replacement legs in their pocket books in case one leg got a run and they didn’t want to look kind of messy?
There were two kinds of nylons in my many “Sears” packages. One kind was called “Replacement Hose” – those are one leg and the original cost on the package said $1.47 with a sale price of $ .49. So the woman who bought these originally – now dead – must have bought stockings by the gross. Another package is called “Spare Parts” and cost $1.35 originally with a sale price of $.69.
The marketing plug on the package says “if one hose runs re-match with hose from another pair. Reversible and interchangeable to fit either leg. Two separate seamless hose with opaque panty-type panels…open at front and back.”
Where were these panti-hose all of my adult life, especially my young adult life when I was raising three children and scrapping every penny to make ends meet? Going without stockings in a Minnesota winter because it was either my stockings or something my daughters needed was no fun. Could these stockings have eliminated a few of the colds I caught in that horrendous weather?
And why did the industry give up these kind of panti-hose to give us two legs permanently attached to the panti part of the hose necessitating our buying a new pair if we get runs on only one side of the panti-hose, which is often what happens to me. I suspect it happens to a lot of women because we tend to be harder on one side of our bodies than the other.
Before this “find” I didn’t even think of such a possibility. Now, I want to know why the panti-hose industry is making me spend money unnecessarily so they can make more. I can’t think of any other reason as to why they would integrate both legs into one panti and make me buy ‘new’ before I had totally worn out the ‘old’ because they found a new-fangled way to create an expensive and short-lived necessity for women.
I notice they are reversible – neither todays’ panti-hose nor stockings are reversible. If you wear them on the wrong side you have an obvious seam at the tip of your toes where it will show if you are wearing open toe shoes. How come with all of our technological advances there could be “reversible” stockings years ago and today only stockings with the seam on the ‘wrong’ side and the smooth finished part on the ‘right’ or outside side?
A second pair of these panti-hose is a replacement for the panti-part of the hose. Were women more conscious of what they spent on such things years ago and were not ready to throw out a perfectly good panti-hose just because the left leg or the right leg had a run in it?
I remember girdles with the hooks on the bottom for stockings to be hooked to so they wouldn’t fall down, but I don’t remember anything like this. What a fantastic find!
Now, maybe it is time to get these modern companies to become more cost conscious about women’s underwear. They are fast becoming the most expensive part of a woman’s wardrobe and the part of our wardrobes which wear-out, break, run very quickly necessitating immediate replacement.
Panti-hose can range from about $4.50 all the way up to $20-30.00 and beyond and you can’t take off one leg of those expensive hose and replace them with another leg at a fraction of the cost if you run or poke a hole in only one leg.
Sears, Roebuck and Company was very popular at one time. With this estate sale find, I understand why. These stockings were sold by – Sears in Chicago, Ill. 60607. The package for the two parts has an original price of $2.27 on sale for $ .49.
In the end, however, it looks as though both kinds of panti-hose were sold for the same amount when they went on sale, with the “Spare Parts” being a bit more expensive. As I take the packages apart, the “Spare Parts” is more flexible because you can either use them as one side of the panti-hose or they are stand alone with the panti part of the panti-hose being replaced. One can hook these “Spare Parts” onto the panti part of the panti-hose or onto your girdle with what looks like some kind of precursor to todays’ velcro.
I paid fifty cents each for these stockings at the sale. They are worth the money. I will probably never wear them, but I will put them in my ‘clothes history’ file which I have put together for my grandchildren so they can see a bit of what was, to judge for themselves the value or lack of value for what is. Did we live up to our history and move onward and upward or did we learn from that history how to rip-off the next generation.
At the risk of being trashed I will speak truth to power by saying – todays’ fashion industry is about as bad as todays’ food processing industry. All for the company – taking as much money as possible from the consumer, while giving them either the ridiculous or the empty. With the cost of the equipment today to get into either industry it is unlikely that a competitor with the real deep-down interest in the consumer will surface.
Because we follow a leader like sheep, such outrageousness by such industries are not only possible, but thrive. All they have to do is spend millions on marketing to get all of us sheep to follow their latest trend. They can tell us we are not ‘smart’ ‘fashionable’ ‘one of the beautiful people of the world’ if we don’t follow and we go crazy with the amount of money and time we will spend trying to imitate.
Our paths do diverge however. They go to the bank where they are welcomed with smiles and open arms, we go to the poor house where everything we have managed to accumulate, save, keep, is stripped from us so we can start all over again trying to dig out of an unnecessarily deep hole. Who are you? Want to wear ‘replacement parts nylon hosiery’ or content with more expensive and easily ripped contemporary hosiery?
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
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A Guest Responds to Rice and Kerry
Thursday, November 29th, 2012I read your blog on the Secretary of State fiasco and I am so glad someone has put out there what is actually happening. I am especially distressed about what I am seeing in the media and hearing about this Susan Rice thing. Imagine putting such a lovely young woman through such trials because they need to clear a path for a WUCM member to become Secretary of State. It is criminal! Almost reaches the level of Depraved Indifference to who she is – how hard she worked to gain her credentials – how even harder she worked to serve the United States for a lot of years – to serve all of us – and now the reward for her hard work is this treatment which brings to my mind ‘Depraved Indifference. ‘ A legal terms, but fully adequate in this context. And that legal terms brings Philippa Schuyler – another African American woman – to mind.
If we had a media which published the truth over the decades and generations our ruling White Upper Class Males would not have been able to buy the election for Ronald Reagan – which all of us saw, but none reported. Now, Republicans are coming to the fore to attempt to insure that their group is not left out of power – not their Republican group, but their WUCM group. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Tea Party etc. all belong to this group.
The media in Massachusetts is becoming confident and putting its toe in the water and beginning to talk (3:45am Channel 6) about how to persuade Governor Patrick to appoint Scot Brown to the seat that will be vacated by John Kerry when he is appointed Secretary of State. If that doesn’t confirm your breakfast blog, nothing will.
The media is clearly complicit in all of this and their tom-toms ring out around the world heralding what they are all in agreement with and see as their vested interest to the continued sharing of power.
There was or is a group researching Philippa Schuyler, to keep her memory alive and her accomplishments in front of the public. I think that is a laudable effort, especially at times like this when one can see similarities. To put what is happening to Susan Rice in a historical context brings a total different picture to the forefront.
Philippa Schuyler was a young African American woman, killed by what some of us believe was first degree murder i.e. Depraved Indifference. I’ve heard more than one person lately agreeing with me and I believe some information from the Philippa Schuyler committee also said the same thing.
The parallel to the way Susan Rice’s reputation is being ‘killed’ by a group trying to maintain the WUCM’s control is startling.
With Philippa Schuyler, there was a total ignoring of what happened to her by some and an attempt at public justification by the WUCM. There was a Congressional Hearing. No charges were brought even though clearly there should have been charges of Depraved Indifference and the culprits should have been brought to trial, but Congress held a hearing which they thought and apparently accurately so, would defuse any problems from the African American community following her death. Not a peep since. Not a peep from the minority and women groups about what is happening to Susan Rice, either. Does that show how far outside African American women are? Who are your defenders?
Ms. Rice, apparently, must be sacrificed so John Kerry can have his day in the sun as Secretary of State? Where is the African American, Latino American, Women’s groups on what is happening in front of your faces. The quiet from you is deafening. Have you not heard – ‘if they come for me in the morning, they will return for you in the afternoon?” Certainly, an outcry behind what happened to Philippa Schuyler might have changed the world for minorities and especially women – but there was none.
What is interesting about the Philippa Schuyler parallel – Philippa and her father were very conservative in their thinking and writing, except where it came to reporting on events and issues where their main criteria was the truth. They were conservative to the point of being involved with the then John Birch Society. That didn’t, however, save Philippa’s life. Liberal or Conservative doesn’t really matter does it! Isn’t that what this bit of theatre is saying? The WUCM Republicans ignore party lines when it comes to some things – and maintaining and increasing the power of two of their own is paramount. The WUCM Democrats have and will in the future, return the favor.
Philippa drowned and her parents suffered the extreme loss and grief that happens under those circumstances.
Philippa was a great child prodigy and pianist who was outstanding and traveled the world playing concerts on many world stages. She composed symphonies by the age of six. If she had lived, I think her journalistic talent would have dwarfed her music. Some of us believe it was her journalism which caused her death. But she was both and it took both sides of her to produce the articles she wrote.
She was the only one to stand tall and write the real story of what happened in Africa decades ago in the death of – oh my, was it Lumumba! Every other journalist got the story wrong, but they were consistent in what they reported. So their story came from where? to be so consistently wrong? “Intel?” Did all of the journalists who engaged in that bit of conspiracy lose their jobs? Miss promotions? etc. etc. Maybe they need to step back and take another look at this Susan Rice scenario.
Philippa, who kept her contacts with those low on the economic totem pole, had ways to find the truth and she wrote about what she found and it was accurate and truth and her parents then had to deal with her death from, what some of us believe was purposefully negligent, – depraved indifference.
How does that relate to Susan Rice? Yet another African American woman is being slaughtered for things which are minor especially when compared to things the WUCM group has done and suffered no career set-back from. Yet Ms. Rice is being set-up to lose a possible appointment as Secretary of State because the WUCM group has a member – John Kerry – who wants to be Secretary of State. And here we also have some Congressional involvement. Not the Democrats, that would be too clear, but we don’t need to be led to see through a mirror darkly, we need to see face to face.
Through the mirror darkly we see the Republicans fighting Ms. Rice – White Males all, except for the involvement of the White Woman who looks like a parallel to the African Americans who worked with the KKK. All helping their brother WUCM members by attempting to take care of two of them – Scot Brown and John Kerry. I can’t believe how this stuff happens over and over and over again and a story is spun by the media which has nothing to do with reality, but is throwing smoke in your face so your eyes sting and you can’t see what is in front of you – and throwing the work over to the other side so the WUCM can say – see, its not us – bring us that bowl of water so we can wash our hands clean and prove to you we were not involved! Whose hands are being washed here? The Republicans? No – its the good ole Democrat boys looking out for their own.
Thanks again for the breakfast article. I wish others had the guts to write the truth. Sitting around Bettina Network breakfast tables I have heard some incredible talk and hope to continue. It certainly cleared my head and got my thinking straightened out.
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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com
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1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.
Tags: bed & breakfast, breakfast table talk, Governor Patrick, John Kerry, Making Connections, politics, Scot Brown, Secretary of State, Susan Rice
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Historical Support, Making Connections, Reader Feedback | Comments Off on A Guest Responds to Rice and Kerry