Monday's Memories

Good Monday morning to ya'll and come on in and have a cup of coffee. I'm on number 2 and planning to drink at least 1 more before I have to make another pot. Just a tad addicted, I think. Yesterday was a rainy, dreary day and it got me to thinking about how I would have filled those hours in the "olden days." I would have probably played with my paper dolls.

Paper dolls? Most of my young friends would have no idea what I am talking about so let me tell you. As soon as I was old enough to handle paper without chewing it. tasting it or tearing it up, I played with paper dolls. These were dolls made out of paper which you cut out and then cut out the clothes to go with it and you dressed, undressed and changed outfits, and lived in an imaginary world with these paper images for hours on end. This is a link to a history of paper dolls and is an accurate account of those dolls I played with for hours and hours: http://www.opdag.com/History.html.

One of my favorites was Betsy McCall! Yep, the McCalls magazine which is still in publication but way back then on the last page was a paper doll named Betsy and several outfits for you to cut out and dress her. The doll was always the same so each month I usually just cut out the clothes for I had the doll but just in case she got hurt (torn), I would cut out extras to keep on hand. She was the little girl of the 1950s and I wanted clothes which looked just like hers and guess what? Mama would make them for me! There were also Betsy McCall dress patterns for the home sewer and Betsy McCall dolls and Betsy McCall lots of stuff. She was the model for little girls and may I add, a good one.

Some of the comic books had paper dolls also and these would look like teens. They had boobs, a waist and long legs and my 2 favorites were Betty and Veronica from the Archie comics. These I would cut out and then place the doll on a piece of notebook paper and trace around them to make my own clothes for them. I would color them, cut them out and play and play. This was my first and last career in clothes designing but I was pretty good.

It was fun to create a house for my dolls out of boxes. Mama taught me how to make tables, chairs, beds and other furniture using the wallpaper samples from the sample book from Sears and Roebuck. I would make a car from a small shoe box and would have a great time imagining a world in which I thought I would live some day. Mama also would make me a doll cradle from and empy oatmeal box and here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/8n9ge2. Your little girl would like it I'm sure.

There was a fly in the ointment however for I had a little brother named Arvin who didn't like to play by himself. We had a younger brother, Sam, but he was satisfied to play alone and Arvin would get bored and begin to pester us. He would pretend he wanted to be the driver for my paper dolls in their shoe box car and drive them just right and then a grin came accross his face and he would drag that box a fast as his chubbly little legs would carry him, sling it around and holler, "Car wreck" and throw the paper dolls out. Pretending they were hurt, he would tear off arms, legs and heads while I screamed for mama and cried loudly. Of course this was music to his ears and he would laugh and run..

He was pretty good about waiting until I was using my "free" paper dolls from Sears and Roebuck. We would cut out the models in the catalogue and play with them Now Montgomery Ward's catalogue was the pits for they would not show the entire person. They didn't show all the legs - cut them off just below the knees, so needless to say we didn't care for that. Sears was the best.

I kinda feel sorry for the girls today for their dolls have to drink, wet, cry and be fed. This means they have to have batteries and you have to tend to them and takes very little imagination to enjoy. That is the world we live in now - takes very little imagination. Kinda sad.

Nuff said,
The Georgia Peach

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Like I used to do. I loved my paper dolls.