Tales from the Blue Room

Tales from the Blue Room
I grew up in a Mayberry type neighborhood. (And if it wasn't, don't tell me!) It was a corner house, on Lyle Avenue in Waco, Tx. It was a time of being able to walk to your friends house, late at night, and no one worried about you. When we would leave the house, my mama would say "Don't lock the door....someone might need something." We slept with our windows open, enjoying the breeze that the attic fan pulled in. One of my favorite summer memories is of waking up to the sound of Rufus, an elderly black man, mowing Brownie's yard with an old push mower, then turning over, pulling up the sheets, and being lulled back to sleep by the very sound that had awakened me.

In the middle of the Lyle house was a very interesting room that we called the Blue Room. I don't really remember how old I was when my daddy painted it blue, and I don't remember when he painted it back white......but the name never changed. In the Blue Room was my mama's sewing machine. I can remember watching her make everything from Barbie doll clothes, to aprons, to clothes for me. She made quilts too, but never got close to her sewing machine while working on those. The quilts were always done by hand. Of all the things she made, the only thing I remember her complaining about was the wedding dress she made for my Barbie doll, the one with the black bouffant hair-do. She said "Dana, I'd rather make an adult size wedding dress than ever tackle a Barbie doll wedding dress again!" But she made it, complete with lace, tiny white beads and buttons, and I thought it was the prettiest dress I'd ever seen.

The blue room wasn't very big, but we managed to squeeze a card table in there, and I had a card table house made out of fabric. I would take my dolls and get in that little play house and listen to the sound of the sewing machine as my sweet mama made whatever it was she was working on at the time. She had lots of fabric and lots and lots of buttons. Her buttons were kept in big round tins. She would let me get a tin down and open it up and it was like a gold mine in there! She would let me match up buttons, and then string them on a piece of twine. I am the proud owner of those button tins now. I can get one off the shelf, open it up, and run my hands through those buttons and it takes me back in time.....to the Blue Room.