Cinderella Village

I washed five feed sacks and made me a bedspread.From a display at the Textile Museum in Englewood, Tennessee

Fire took our house, our furniture, our clothes,my begged-for, to-be-my-first-day-of-second-grade,lace-trimmed, green-on-cream, dotted Swiss dress—gone.  Neighbors on farms for miles around pitched inwith plaintive words and their best hand-me-downsthey brought to my grandmother’s house.She thanked them at the door, then took me on her lap.“Ma,” I sobbed, “my dress!” We rockedas I snuggled in her arms,the way I’d snuggled when I was four.  She let me cry awhile, and then she said,“I need some chicken feed. Let’s go get us some sacks.”We walked down to Clark Brothers General Storewhere Mr. Charlie showed us one-hundred-pound, cotton-percale,pink-backgrounded, fairy-godmother-and-Cinderella-patterned feed sacks.“We’ll need both bags,” she said, breaching her frugal waysand handing him two quarters. Imploringly she softly said,“I’ll be back next week with the rest.” He looked at meas I heard him whisper, “Never you mind, Miss Molly!”  And one week later I sat—front-row desk—in my hand-me-down shoes and trimmed-in-baby-blue-bias-tape,Cinderella dress. At recess even the fourth-grade girlscame ’round to check it out.  And Mr. Charlie’s business boomed.He kept getting orders for chicken feed in Cinderella sacks.