Little Greta is wearing a dress my mother made Laura! My Momma made the little dress over 50 years ago. I think she sent me three cotton dresses. This is the way she stitched little girl dresses. They had sash at the waist, a gathered skirt, and little sleeves. They all looked a little different. Some had collars and some did not. She didn’t use a pattern. In the lower elementary grades, she made me three dresses for school each year. She ordered the material from National Bella Hess. We pulled our clothes off when we came home on the bus. Girls could not wear pants to school until I was in about the 6th grade. I recall in cold weather we could wear pants, but wore a dress over the pants! I loved looking at the catalogs when they came in the mail. In the 1960’s we began ordering from Sears and not National.
National Bellas Hess was a mail-order company known general merchandise catalogs. It began as National Cloak & Suit in the late 1800s and was renamed National Bellas Hess around 1910. The company was a major player among the "big-five" mail-order businesses, alongside Sears, Montgomery Ward, Alden's, and Spiegel. A significant aspect of their history is the 1967 Supreme Court case, National Bellas Hess v. Illinois, which addressed the collection of sales and use tax on mail-order sales. They lost snd filed for bankruptcy in 1971.
We have turned back the clock and are ordering from home once again. Our “catalogs” are all on-line now. Our “wish” books are endless. I order on-line but I like to shop for groceries. If I as young, I’d probably do pick up especially at Walmart. I don’t grocery shop there much. I prefer a smaller store. I buy groceries there but not my weekly supply. I buy groceries once a week. It’s just a habit.
1 comment:
Your Mother was a good seamstress, so was my Mom and yes dresses to school with pants underneath in the winter time. I like doing the pick up at Walmart, it saves me so much time. I do go inside at Aldi and another grocery store to pick out my own fruit, milk and bread and a few things that Walmart does not carry. I used to love looking through the Wish books:)
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