I have given this essay the title which may recall some distant memories of the Bible by calling it “Savers of String” instead of “String Savers”. Now having settled that question, I would like to dedicate it to Thelma Dupont. This essay is so dedicated to Thelma because she comes from a family larger than mine and I suspect that in that family there were few millionaires.
Those of you with long memories will recall the only thing resembling plastic was a car window made of isinglass. Isinglass gave a distorted view of the world because that is the way it was manufactured, but at least it was possible to view a large object through the glass and was used primarily in automobiles doors. As time progressed, namely, at the beginning of the Second World War, we had a wonderful development called cellophane. This of course was not used in car windows but it was used in many other situations where it was possible to view the object in question through the cellophane.
During this period in time, which lasted at least until 1945 or 1950, the main thing that held packages together was string. String came in all sizes and was used by every merchant. For example, I can remember during my lifetime that grocery clerks at John Gualdoni’s grocery store in Brentwood, Missouri used string for everything. When the butcher cut your meat, he wrapped it in butcher paper and then put a string around it. This may seem like a primitive measure but it was all that we had until about 1950. And we got along reasonably well.
My grandchildren would probably have trouble recalling the days when we did not have high definition television. I assure my grandchildren that those days existed. Similarly, youngsters must consider that in earlier times there were no zippers. Clothes were buttoned by use of a button hole and a button. The most important part of a man’s trousers, called the fly, had button holes and buttons. As hard as it might seem to believe, there were no zippers in the flies of men’s clothing. I suspect that the same was true of women’s clothing.
But as times went forward, there was developed in this country and throughout the world the plastics industry. Many of us have come to regret the use of plastics that do not disintegrate and last for several years. Before the coming of plastics, people relied primarily on strings to hold packages together. My wife has remembered the device I believe used in hardware stores and bakeries wherein a bucket was attached to the ceiling with a small opening in the bottom, through which string appeared. When a knot was made in the string, men with muscular arms would pull the string apart. For non-muscular ladies, there was a choice of scissors or a device installed near the check-out counter with a sort of a razor blade to sever the string. The point is that in primitive days, we had no zippers, no scotch tape, no plastic bags and the world relied upon buttons and string.
There were those among us, particularly during the Depression years, who saw to it that nothing went to waste. In that era, string was saved. It could be knotted up or it could be saved in long loops. A good many people saved string in a ball. Whenever the package required string, there was no rule against tying two pieces of string together to make a longer piece. I have no scientific data on the matter of string savers but I would believe that when men were looking for wives, they might give an advantage to those who saved string because of their thriftiness.
Those of us who were raised during the era of the 1929 Depression are probably among the foremost string savers. I freely admit and actually brag about the fact that I was a string saver. On top of that, I saved rubber bands, using the jar of a quart bottle to hold them in place until they were needed.
I fully expect that the dedicatee, Thelma, was raised in this atmosphere. Everything that could be saved had to be saved as a means of making ends meet. Today we have plastic tape that binds materials together. I have no great problem with plastic tape, and it has usually served me well. I do have trouble getting the ends loose so that the wheel will turn to dispense the tape. I suppose it is a function of my fingernails not being long enough to take the tape from the roll. But nostalgia probably has overtaken me in that I miss the beauty of string savers.
I do not know what esoteric forces combined to make me produce an essay on string savers. I am somewhat uncertain as to why I chose Thelma Dupont as the heroine of this piece. But Thelma projects a good image and if it were up to me I would say to the rest of the world that string savers like Thelma are a thoughtful and helpful lot. Now of course I have run out of things to say about the savers of string. Unfortunately it is impossible to use string as a means of extending this essay. And so for that reason I salute Miss Dupont and I will quietly fold my tent on the subject of the savers of string.
E. E. CARR
October 27, 2011
Essay 589
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Kevin’s commentary: I think the coolest thing here is that cars used to have windows made of Mica, which is what “Isenglass” was unless Pop’s cars’ windows were made of fishes’ air bladders. Incidentally I am a lesser god of apostrophes.
On a more topical note I think Pop would be pleased to hear that my childhood home was always well-stocked with string. Granted it was always a spool of perpetually fraying white twine which was so inconvenient to work with that it pretty much doomed any endeavor to which it was committed, but we had it nonetheless.