5

A. Varesano interviewing Mary Marshlik 8/21/72
Tape 28-1
AV: Lace. Do you mean like this kind...
MM: No, they would have like a floral design over them, and then there would be a border on the center part where the two panels would meet. There would be the main pattern. And then the edges were different, so then the flow-ered pattern was in the center, and you hang two panels on.
AV: And it was made of really like lace material...
MM: It was cotton, it was made of cotton, and it was lace material.
AV: Knitted in a lace style...
MM: In fact, I have a pair of curtains (underlined) like that. (she gets them out)
AV: Explain about these curtains here. How old would they be?
MM: Oh, I know that these are, these must be about twenty-five years old, at least.
AV: And where were they used? Curtains like this in your house?
MM: In the living room (underlined). You'd find them in the living room, mostly. Or, in the bigger houses, in the larger houses, they had them in the dining room (underlined).
AV: Would they be used in the kitchen at all?
MM: No, in the kitchen (underlined) you'd more or less find home-made curtains, and they came by the yard, and it would be something similiar (pronounced to rhyme with 'familiar') to this, but it would come by the yard, and then, ah, my mother would take and put a hem on top and the bottom, and, as I said, there were no curtain rods, so there would be three nails, ah, one on each end of the frame and then one in the center. And then you'd draw a string through them and then you would wrap the string around the center nail and bring it over to the other end, and that way it would hold it tight, that the curtain hung straight.
AV: So you would tie the string to each nail in the corner, draw the curtains on it, and then wrap it around the center nail...
MM: No, you put the string through the curtain first, you'd use a safety pin and then you'd ah, then you'd pull it through them hem in the curtain. And then you would take and you would tie one end to the, one end of the string to one of the nails on the edge. And then you would take and pull that tight and then wrap the string around a couple of times around the nail in the center, and then put the other half on...
AV: Oh, I see...
MM: Other half, ah, other side, and then hang panel curtain, hang it, and then you'd wrap it around the other nail and bring it as tight as possible so that your curtains would hang straight.
AV: And then tie it...
MM: And then tie it, so that way your curtains hung straight.
AV: How often would you change that, in your house?
MM: Well, ah, usually about four or five times a year.
AV: On special occasions?
MM: On special - Christmas, Easter, spring cleaning, fall cleaning, they'd be taken down and they'd be washed and hung up again.
AV: The same ones.
MM: Yes, because there weren't others to replace them. It was usually the same ones. And, the window shades were a dark green, then later on, they came out with a different kind of window shades, white on the outside and dark green on the inside.
AV: And they were better?
MM: Well, the reason for that is that the white looked nice from the outside, and the dark green on the inside still didn't let the light in. You still had more or less had privacy and then the sun wouldn't come in so it wouldn't get so hot in the summer time.