16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Thursday, May 18, 1911:  Carrie Stout was over this afternoon. We went for lilacs and after she had a big bouquet, she became afraid of the bumble bees.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Sounds like two friends having fun on a pleasant spring day while doing simple things together—gathering lilacs while goofing around as they worried about bumble bees. Ah, the joys of being young and carefree.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Wednesday, May 17, 1911: I am busy these days ripping tucks out of my skirts. They are inclined to be just a trifle too short. My right forefinger is getting so sore. Wonder if it will prove another runaround. 

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I wonder why the skirts didn’t fit right. Had Grandma gained a little weight?—or maybe styles were a little longer than they’d been the previous spring? A hundred years ago clothes were worn until they wore out, yet they remained stylish because they were regularly remade.

Today we buy new clothes each season in the latest colors and styles. Our closets are stuffed to the gills with seldom worn clothes from last year and the year before.

I’m annoyed with myself when I buy a new brown pencil skirt because my navy pleated skirt is hopelessly out of style—yet I won’t be caught dead wearing the pleated skirt. Sometimes I long for the good old days when clothes were regularly remodeled (though I’m all thumbs when it comes to sewing).

A book published by the Butterick Company in 1911 called The Dressmaker: A Complete Book on All Matters Connected with Sewing and Dressmaking from the Simplest Stitches to the Cutting, Making, Altering, Mending and Caring for the Clothes has a chapter on remodeling clothes:

Nothing accumulates so fast in every household as half-worn clothing, and the dead capital that it represents is apt to make the thoughtful ones draw a deep breath.  . .

One ought, at the very beginning of each season, to set to work to take a critical survey of last year’s wardrobe. It is the easiest way to find out exactly what new clothes are needed and exactly how far one can go with the old ones. Coats, suits, and dresses that are still in sound physical condition, but which have grown out of style, should be remade. The remodeling of a pair of sleeves, the recutting of a skirt, will almost always give a new lease of life to a suit.

Decide first what clothes are worth remaking. When the materials are badly worn it is hardly worth while going to any amount of trouble in the way of renovations. But when the material is sound and whole it is little short of criminal not to take advantage of the possibilities. . . .

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Tuesday, May 16, 1911: Started to make a much needed apron. Mother and I had quite a squabble over it. She said I wasn’t making it right. Started to embroider a jabot. Don’t suppose I need it though. Just something to take up room.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

A jabot is a decorative ruffle on the front of a shirt or dress. A hundred years ago they were considered a stylish accessory.  Currently female supreme court judges often wear them.

And, today I learned how to pronounce a new word. Jabot is pronounced zhab-oh or jab-oh  I was telling my son that I needed to write an entry about  jabots–and we ended up discussing how to pronounce it. I had pronounced it “ja-bot.” But according to the dictionary the “t”  is silent.

I wonder what Grandma was doing incorrectly when she was making the apron. Old-time apron directions are in a previous post.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Monday, May 15, 1911:  I was so very busy this forenoon. Sometimes I can be very energetic, if I want to. Bessie was out this afternoon.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma probably was unaware of a major event that occurred on this date a hundred years ago.  If you look in a history book, there generally are two events mentioned that occurred in 1911—one was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the other was the U.S. Supreme Court decision that broke up Standard Oil.

The Court ruled a hundred years ago today that Standard Oil was a monopoly and that it must be broken up because it violated the Sherman Anti-trust Act.

John Rockefeller founded—and then led Standard Oil as it grew into one of the largest firms in the nation. According to Wikipedia, in 1904 Standard Oil controlled 91% of oil production and 85% of final sales in the US.

Investigative journalists called muckrakers highlighted the problems and inequities caused by monopolies, corporate greed, and the robber barons.

Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting.

Ida Turnball

The Supreme Court decision symbolized the end of the robber baron era in the US.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Thursday, May 11, 1911:  It is quite unnecessary to state what I did today, nor would it prove a bit interesting for it is just the same hum-drum duties that we pass through every day. Ruth told me this evening that it was no wonder that everybody despised me, I was so disagreeable.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

What caused Grandma’s sister Ruth to tell her that she was disagreeable and that everyone despised her? I’m sure Grandma said something very annoying or maybe even nasty—but from the entry it’s also obvious that Ruth’s retort hurt and that Grandma worried about what others thought of her.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Wednesday, May 10, 1911: I did about half of the ironing this morning. I don’t call that very much of a suit do you? This afternoon I had to carry water to be used in making mortar and spilt waters on my skirts.

 Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Why was the family making mortar? Does Grandma mean they were making cement—or mortar to be used when bricks were laid?

I think she probably was referring to cement. I picture that the path between the house and barn was just a dirt path and that it probably was sometimes muddy. Maybe they were laying a sidewalk.

Or, maybe they were making a cement floor for the barnyard. Until I saw this entry I never thought about the barnyard—now I’m wondering whether the floor was dirt or cement. . . . Or. . . .

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Monday, May 8, 1911:  Toiled away at the washer this morning. This afternoon I went over to Stout’s. My first experience in telephoning. The voice at the other end of the wire sounded rather squeaky. I telephoned to Besse. Ma was so rejoiced to get her teeth back again, which she had sent off on a vacation of one week.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

In yesterday’s entry Grandma went to see her friend Carrie Stout’s new telephone—but apparently was too nervous to try the new technology that day. But she went back the next day—and felt braver and called her married sister Besse.

Both Carrie and Besse lived on the road between McEwensville and Watsontown. Apparently the phone wires went between the two towns; and people living on the main road were able to get phone service before those living on the side roads.

I mentioned this diary entry to my husband Bill and he made several comments about phones, so I asked him to be a guest blogger:

It is amazing how far phones have come from exotic box of wires that squeak out a voice, to a constant presence in our lives that are semi-permanently attached us. Phones are now ‘personal communication devices’ that are increasingly hard to distinguish from normal computers.  You’ll soon walk into your office, plug your phone into a cradle and keyboard on your desk, and type away on your phone to do your regular computer work.

My favorite telephone memory is from the late 1970s.  I was living in an isolated community on Andros Island in the Bahamas, working on an agricultural development project.  There was only one phone in the town at the time.  It was in an old-fashioned phone booth in front of the telephone company office in the center of town.  Phone calls to the U.S. cost around $10 at the time.  I paid my $10 to the clerk, and knowing that she was probably listening in on the call, I went out to the phone booth and called Sheryl’s parents to ‘ask for her hand in marriage’, as they say.

Bill Lazarus

False teeth

Grandma’s mother was only 49 years old—yet she already had false teeth. From the diary entry it sounds like she’d probably had them for awhile since they’d apparently needed some sort of repairs. This was an era before fluoridation and people probably didn’t take as good of care of their teeth as they do now.

When I read the entries about Grandma’s toothache (April 11, April 15, April 18), and how she was in pain for almost a month before she tried to visit a dentist  on May 6 (and how she failed to get the tooth filled then)—it makes me wonder at what age Grandma herself got false teeth.