Up Town Saturday

 

Ice Cream Shop, Jamestown, KY, original Post Office

After the chores are finished the most important day of the week is Saturday, be it country or town. Breakfast is a hurried affair as each person in a household has special plans for the day. It is a day of socializing with family and friends.
  When people had to travel long distances by horse and wagon some families kept a tiny one-room house in town for sleeping over. In Texas, where some of these cottages still exist they have been restored as small homes for one or two persons. Others slept in & under their wagons or bunked in with family members who lived in town.
   The advent of automobiles didn't change the custom of going to town on Saturday for supplies, business affairs, recreation, and visiting. Even today though the meeting places have changed from Main Streets and school or church buildings people flock to large indoor malls with vast parking lots especially when cooler weather arrives. Saturday is the true vacation day of the week for the communities.
   Going to town meant visiting with friends while one used a laundromat to the the entire family wash at one time in a few hours instead of stringing it out over an entire day one load at a time. Even thought a family had a washer and dryer at home the men of the family never understood the desire of their women folk to use those big machines in town.
   Stocking up on a week or month's supplies was important for there were few country groceries near their homes where one could obtain all the goods necessary to sustain the family. The women generally shopped in chain groceries devoted to food. For clothes, sewing materials, and shoes they frequented a dry goods store. Children were delighted to view the bones of their feet in an x-ray machine, it didn't matter that there was a warning sign indicating harm from too frequent usage.
   Men left their corn to be ground for feed at a mill or picked up sacks at the feed store, and tended to congregate in the courthouse, hardware store, or pool room. A haberdashery provided clothes for men and boys. Drug stores had a fountain for ice cream delights and sodas, sandwiches, magazines & newspapers, cosmetics, and coffee besides medicines.
   The star of the town was the movie theater.

Art Deco Star Theater, Russell Springs, KY

Saturday was double-feature day of westerns, cartoons, and news reels. If children under twelve could manage to get to the show before one o'clock the cost was a dime, with fifteen cents left from a treasured quarter for treats. No one complained if you sat through the showing twice except your parents if you were late for supper.
   One of the most unique small town movie houses was in Dixon, KY long before drive-in theaters. Each spring a man would paint the outside wall of his service station a fresh white. During the spring, summer, and fall on good weather Saturday nights he would use the wall as a movie screen. Patrons would bring their own treats, chairs, and cushions to watch a motion picture show.
   When friends from my home town get together to travel memory lane this story always comes up. The stores stayed open until eight o'clock. For a short period of time the only television in town sat in the window of the furniture store. It had a screen about eight inches square. On Saturday night people would gather on the sidewalk outside and watch a show on this strange new luxury. I don't remember what it cost, if I ever knew, but everyone was sure it was beyond their price range. After the program people would go next door to the drug store for a soda or a hand-dipped ice cream cone before going home.
   I've talked about the delights of going to town on Saturday, but there is a hidden picture behind the story. Each community had the stores I've mentioned and they provided jobs, substance for the owner, and taxes to the government. Those shops and businesses made the town. When they began to die and disappear from the scene a way of life for many Americans also vanished. Some communities are making an effort to bring back these institutions to attract tourists, but I expect it's mostly for their own benefit.

Dinning on a Legend

Did your grandmother have a plate or platter with a blue picture covering the entire surface? An oriental design with a temple, a willow tree leaning over a stream, a man in a boat, a bridge, two birds, bushes, and a fence. If so she had an example of the china pattern that holds the record for the longest unbroken line of production -- Blue Willow.
   Somewhere in the world manufacturers are still making the pattern that began in the early 1700s, which over the years has changed very little, if at all.

Blue Plate Special

   The famous Blue Plate Special was so named because it was originally served on divided blue willow plates in railroad dinning cars. The example shows a standard menu of meatloaf, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, and a corn muffin. The plate was manufactured by the Moriyama company of Japan with the special circle to hold the bread when the dinning car swayed. The cup and saucer are from the American manufacture Homer Laughlin of Newell, WVA restaurant line.
   The unique pattern has come to symbolize hearth, home, family, prosperity, and security. While watching television or a movie it is easy to spot when any of the players sit down to a mean or a snack. Most of the Western films made by John Wayne have blue willow on the table, Miss Ellie's kitchen on the original Dallas used this famous pattern as the film musical Gypsy. It was also in Jessica Fletcher's kitchen on Murder She Wrote. It is fun to watch a meal being eaten and see willow patterned china on the table. It is not always blue, Jimmy Stewart (Cheyenne Cattle Company) and the Cartwrights of Bonanza used red willow to drink their coffee.
   The willow pattern on china is found not only in blue, but a full rainbow of colors (red, green, pink, yellow, brown, black, burgundy, lavender, multi-colored, and fine gold inlay.) It has been manufactured in nearly every country in the world where the clay for fine china is obtained.
   The distinctive pattern is used on book covers, record album covers, napkins, flatware, etched on crystal, imprinted on bathroom sinks, engraved on brass bed warmers, clothing and upholstery, soap, wallpaper, thimbles, hairbrushes, shaving mugs, etc. and the list goes on and on.
   The pattern tells a story of a young man, the girl he loves, her father, their escape from her home, and their deaths. It is a tale that is associated with China, but it has original literary roots in the annals of the King Arthur legends of Tristan and Isolda. The willow story is told in song in Shakespeare as an old folksong. It is one of the major loves stories of the ages.
   Few pieces show up at garage sales or in antique malls today and those that do are invariably over priced on the extremely high side for perfectly ordinary ware that was produced by the tons in the Untied States, England, Japan, and China during the 19th and 20th centuries. In some cases it is easy to tell the country of origin by the birds, Japan's have fat birds where most of the US and others have skinny birds.
   Nash Black spent a week last summer in Dallas, TX visiting with other international willow collectors and have enjoyed their fellowship for twenty-five years. Somewhere in all their mysteries and ghost stories you will find willow mentioned.
   Jim Young was introduced as a character in Sandprints of Death when he finds a shard of the willow birds in the sand on a winter beach. Edisto Island, off the coast of South Carolina was struck by a hurricane and a hotel was swept into the ocean in 1893. Pieces of the broken china from the dinning room still wash  up on the beach after over 100 years.