It’s Just Bow Ties

I’m fickle. My short attention span is measured in weeks and months rather than minutes. I kept bees for a few years, had five hives, but over time they didn’t survive and I didn’t replace them. When I was interested, I was very, very interested, then I lost bees and interest.

The local bee keeper group still has me for a member without bees.

There was a yearning for an extra long ham radio wire antenna, like a couple of hundred yards.

A “long wire antenna” is more beneficial for receiving than transmitting. Receivers don’t care how long the wire antenna is, but transmitters are picky.

A long-time friend, “Rick,” made his own suits for as long as I knew him, and he could sew one up in a weekend. I admired that.

I found my mother’s “Singer 500” sewing machine in the attic.

It was her second sewing machine. My father bought her a treadle machine and a cigar box full of accessories, and she used it to the limit of its ability.

It was amazing what her treadle sewing machine could do slowly and her Singer could do fast.

Aunt Margaret Watts was a Home Economics graduate of Berry College but had a very long career teaching first graders. She was at home with first graders but didn’t take on any new technology such as microwave ovens because she didn’t want to “bother her brain.” And there was the “radiation.”

She made shirts for me on her “Favorite” treadle machine. They fit, sort of, but one shoulder was always tighter than the other.

Out of the attic and somewhat cleaned up, the Singer 500 wouldn’t budge. It had not been serviced or cleaned in decades.

Walt Kirby knows sewing machines and said that Mom’s machine was top of the line when it was built and would still do about anything a modern computer driven machine could do.

What I want this machine to do is sew up bow ties.

There aren’t many men who wear bow ties. My doctor and I wear them, but his ties lean towards conservative prints and I want something that pops. I want a tie made of the first material I see in the fabric store.

If you are going to stand out for wearing a bow tie, you might as well radiate.

The “Kansas Woman,” who can sew anything and has a machine that can do anything, offered to give me a morning of ”recurrent training” and thinks after that I’ll be on my own.

I think I’ll need some formal lessons. It’s not like I want to make my own suits and hem pants. It’s just bow ties.

For now.

joenphillips@yahoo.com