tripping down memory lane

Beth and I have had to go to that time capsule on Perry Avenue known as our mother's house to find things she's needed or wanted. The last time there I found a newspaper from 1952 with a front page report of the annual Doll Carriage Parade at White's Park. There's Beth on the front page, above the fold, in her crepe paper dress and her crepe paper decorated doll carriage after having placed first, receiving a shiny, silver dollar. Our winning was as annual as the event because of Edythe and her amazing talent with her Singer Featherweight sewing machine and all that crepe paper from Woolworth's. We always got prizes, Brian with his decorated tricycle and Beth and me with our crepe paper dresses and decorated carriages.
She was amazing with that sewing machine. Every Christmas there was a doll with a complete homemade wardrobe under the tree. She cried when we were too old for dolls anymore. I still have all the doll clothes she made and all the knitted sweaters and hats made by her able assistant, Madlyn. All my school dresses sprang from that machine and many of them were hand smocked. I remember the day the dresses stopped. Raymond gave Edythe a new Singer sewing machine with a zigag attachment and my Easter dress of that year became it's maiden voyage only to never reach the shore of "ready to be worn". It began life as plain yellow cotton and became a sampler of all the stitches that zigzagger could do in all the colors that Coats and Clark thread had to offer. Something happened and it's fate came to be that of permanent resident of the back hall closet for the rest of its unfinished life. The next time I had a home sewn dress it was made my me, using the Featherweight Singer. It was a sweet machine.