Those of you who were raised in the precincts of America’s great cities may well have missed out on an article of men’s wear that is usually associated with hard work and/or country ways. Again, if I may use my father as an example, I would like to cite one article of his clothing that is the subject of this essay today. My father, of course, came from a rural background and, when he reached the big city of St. Louis, he did not abandon the idea of hard work. My old man always had the idea that hard work made honest citizens and that dirt on the clothing was an essential part of being a hard worker. As I have related before, my father in his long career always worked with his hands which were never once soiled by a job in an office. At the end of the day, he would come home with dirt on his clothing but never on his face. After the five o’clock whistle sounded, old Ezree would go to a place where he could get out his tin wash basin and wash his face and neck. No deodorant or aftershave lotion was involved ever. While his clothes may have been filthy, he cared at least that his person was as immaculate as he could make it.
The men my father worked with in large measure shared my father’s concern about cleanliness. Many of them had their own tin wash basins and would wash up at the conclusion of the day, after the whistle blew. But that is not the main subject of this essay. The main subject is that while they were working and sweating, they usually carried a red bandanna or a blue bandanna to mop off their faces. In between times, the bandanna could be used for the blowing of noses. But I would suspect that the bandannas were used primarily to sop up the faces of the men my father worked with and were always found in the right rear pocket of the trousers.
I suspect that that article of clothing would never have been identified as a bandanna. As a pure guess, I am at this late date saying that he most likely would have called it his handkerchief. In fact, the bandannas or these large handkerchiefs were used for the mopping of sweat off the brow and/or for blowing the nose.
For our purposes, I will refer to these as bandannas. I was impressed by the thought that Bill Chicka, who was the proprietor of a hardware store in western Pennsylvania, carried a stock of red and blue bandannas. I am so informed on this subject by my wife, who was Bill Chicka’s daughter and his clerk. When the men would put on their overalls, they would often stuff a large handkerchief or a bandanna in the right rear pocket. Miss Chicka, my wife, agrees that the handkerchiefs or bandannas were always colored red or blue. Between the two of us, we can never recall seeing any bandanna or large handkerchief in any other color except red or blue.
So, in history, bandannas are large handkerchiefs which served America’s working men from time immemorial. However, as time marches on, there has been an important development which more or less spelled adios to red or blue bandannas. I suspect that it all stems from a slogan invented by the Kimberly-Clark Company of Neenah, Wisconsin. The slogan was “Don’t put a cold back into your pocket.” The theory was, of course, that people with colds would blow their noses on handkerchiefs and put them back in their pockets. To alleviate this great medical problem, a new device was invented in the 1920s by none other than the Kimberly-Clark organization. That new product was only a part of the line of Kimberly-Clark paper products. It was called “Kleenex.” For reasons unknown to me, the Kimberly-Clark invention was labeled in the beginning as “facial tissues.” As a practitioner of using Kleenex, I would say that I rarely use them for cleansing my face. I use them for blowing my nose.
It was in the 1930s that the Kimberly-Clark organization began to advertise their product as “a disposable handkerchief.” This was followed by the slogan about putting a cold back into your pocket
I am distinctly sorry that Kleenex was unavailable as I was growing up because I had a bad case of hay fever. When the ragweed plant came into bloom in early July in Missouri, my nose would stop up and it would be at least October before the blockages would disappear. In the meantime, there was frequent blowing of the nose as well as sneezes by the carload. This was such a serious development that during the 1930s with my father out of a job, I was taken to a specialist who had large jars of a red fluid and a green fluid in his laboratory. Before I knew what was happening, he inserted a tube into my left nostril and gave me a shot to clear my head. In fact, that shot lifted me off my seat. He did the same thing with the right nostril with the same result as well. After I saw the specialist with the red and green fluids, the effect of the hay fever remained almost identical. But at least my parents tried to give me some relief.
During this period when hay fever afflicted me, I would carry large rags that my mother would launder, using a wash board and then hanging them up to dry until they were what she called “supple.” Because my nose was so sore from having been blown so much, gentleness on those parts was essential. At that time, of course, I had no idea that Kimberly-Clark had a product that offered “suppleness” as one of its prime ingredients.
If we fast forward several years to the 1970s, there was an occasion when I found myself in Moscow. A cold seemed to be on the horizon and I began to ask where a product like Kleenex could be purchased. I started with the woman directly outside my hotel room who collected keys and prevented strangers from entering my room. She was of absolutely no help whatsoever. In the end, I figured that the thing to do was to go to the G.U.M. department store, which was the leading if perhaps the only department store in Moscow. I must say that this was during the era of the Khrushchev/Brezhnev presidency of the USSR. When I approached the various clerks and asked for something on the order of Kleenex, there was a conspiracy, I believe. Each one of them pointed to some other clerk who, she thought, would take care of my problem. Of course there was no Kleenex in the whole Soviet Union. It took me a while to figure that out. By that time, I knew that the only hope was to nurse my supply of handkerchiefs until Swissair could get me to Zurich or Geneva.
But times have improved. At the moment, we are one of Kimberly-Clark’s major customers in that we buy big boxes of Kleenex and have them in the bedroom, in the bathroom, and in other strategic locations throughout this house. But it seemed to me that at this late date, it is time to pay tribute to Kleenex and the Kimberly-Clark organization. They have made life, I believe, much more worthwhile. That was in the day when men like my father and Bill Chicka had to rely on handkerchiefs or bandannas that could be used for wiping the brow as well as blowing the nose.
It could well be that those two old-timers would have pointed out that Kleenex comes only in the color of white, whereas they may well have preferred red or blue napkins or handkerchiefs to blow their nose and wipe their brow. But that is of small moment. I am glad that I have been able to pay this tribute to an organization that has made life much more worthwhile.
E. E. CARR
February 15, 2010
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Kevin’s commentary: As a kid who got cedar fever every spring in Austin without fail, it is hard to imagine making it through those months without a healthy supply of Kleenex. Any bandana that I carried would rapidly have become pretty damn gross.
It occurs to me that Pop made one oversight in this essay, however. He assumed that people raised in America’s great cities would be unfamiliar with bandanas. However, these are a common decorative piece in many gang-related outfits, which can be readily seen in many cities across the US.