My grandmother's apron rests in the bottom drawer of my kitchen cabinet along with my mother's. My mother's is pink and white check gingham with a short flared skirt and broad waist band in the fashion of the fifties. The long apron strings are broad as well so they form a pretty bow tied at the back. It was an apron designed for style and even now looks almost new.

My grandmother's, on the other hand, was made for function. She had many of them since she put on a clean one at least once a day. The fabric of this apron was never really pretty. I imagine her buying it on sale, maybe even as a remnant. It is a pale blue calico with darker blue flowers and chartreuse leaves. Tiny purple petals scattered throughout add a faint touch of whimsy. Pale blue piping all around matches the fabric, but the navy blue thread she used to sew it must have been picked for convenience since it doesn't match anything. Of course, the apron is faded now and threadbare from much use and many washings, but this was an apron of purpose. It had no style. The neck loop had wide straps through which she slipped her head and arms. The straps climbed over her shoulders and reached down to join the sides and apron strings in the back just below her waist and tied it all firmly in place. The apron forms one straight unbending line from bib to hem. Its only purpose was to cover and protect the dresses that Grandma always wore. She made it for her own tall thin frame, and when I try it on now I have to fold it up so the strings wrap around my waist instead of my hips. When I do this, it looses the controlled, purposeful look that I always associated with my grandmother and looks more like me.

I remember her, apron on and short brown hair firmly permed in place, leaning over to roll out pie dough on the old kitchen table with its simulated red brick linoleum top. As a child I spent hours sitting at that table, watching my grandmother make everything from cookies to punch, and pork chops to pies. It was all fascinating, but I liked the pies best. There were pies for every season. The sweet-tart rhubarb came with the spring. Juicy peaches and cherries highlighted the summer, while apple, pumpkin and spicy mince took us through the fall and winter. The best part of her pies was the delicate brown crust. The secret, she said, was the shortening. That may be, but she made it all look easy when it never was for me. She would scoop a gob of the white fat out of a tin can with a measuring cup and sweep it out with her fingers into the heavy blue glazed bowl. Then she reached down into the flour bin, specially built into her kitchen cabinets to accommodate huge fifty pound sacks of flour, and scooped flour into the bowl. After she added some salt, she plunged in with both hands and mixed the flour and fat together until they formed little grains like rice. Then she added water and kept mixing until it was just the right consistency and not sticky. "It doesn't do to overwork the dough," she'd caution. "It makes it tough." I either under work or overwork my dough because my crusts are never flaky and delicate like hers. She pulled the dough into balls, each just the right size for one crust. She'd flatten one out and slap it onto the big flour coated pastry board, turn it over and slap it down again before rolling it out.

No matter how many pies she was making, she always made enough dough with some left over for cinnamon rolls. That was the best part of pie baking. While I ran the tines of a fork around the edges of the pie crust, locking the top and bottom crusts together with little ridges, she'd take all of the dough scraps , form them into a ball and roll it out into a thin rectangular sheet. Then she'd spread on butter, sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon and roll it into a log about an inch thick. She cut that into one inch pieces which we carefully placed in a pie tin standing on their sides like little snails. We put the tag end down so they wouldn't unroll as they cooked. These baked with the pies, but didn't take nearly so long. I helped her clean up the kitchen, waiting as the pies baked and the odor of warm cinnamon filled the room. The flaky little rolls came hot from the oven so again I waited, mouth impatient, saliva flowing until she declared them cool enough to eat. Just like Oreos, I found cinnamon rolls more enjoyable in pieces. Usually, the melted sugar and butter would leak out forming a glaze on the bottom of the roll which gave an extra sweet but sometimes tartly scorched crunch. That's where I would start. Then I'd pull off layer after flaky layer until I hit the soft warm center where the sweet cinnamon flavor was strongest, melting on my tongue as I chewed.

I was about ten when I started hanging out in her kitchen. We would both dawn aprons and Grandma would cook and listen while I chattered and did the little tasks she gave me. I tried to follow her directions, but I probably never got them quite right. The kitchen was her domain and everything was done her way. Grandma graduated from the University of Akron around 1910. If she were graduating now, she would be a business manager or, more likely, a general. She had the discipline and bearing for command. As it was, she fell in love, married a Pennsylvania farmer and led a life similar to that of her mother. Her organizational skills went into her home and the feeding of at least eight people three times a day. While the kitchen seemed huge to me with the white enamel sink across the room from the stove and its refrigerator around the corner in the pantry, it must have felt small to Grandma when she filled it with people and projects.

I can imagine her at breakfast, giving the orders of the day. "Lillian, Marty and Allie Lou stay in and help me. We have peaches to be canned." The rest would know to stay out of the way. After putting on their aprons, the women would bring the baskets full of peaches in from the porch. The first basket would be lifted to the drain board on one side of the sink, the peaches washed and sorted and put in a large bowl on the other side. Someone sat at the table, cut the juicy fruit in half, pealed off the fuzzy skin and removed the craggy pit. The sticky juice would coat her hands, making the knife slippery to hold. Someone else arranged the halves carefully in the jar, cut side down. Grandma would watch over it all and tend the stove. That's what my mother remembers most, the torture of working inside in the hot summer while the stove pumped incessant heat. Sweat dripped into Mother's eyes and ran down under her blouse between her breasts. She prayed for a cool breeze where any wind seemed to pick heat down from the sun and up off the acres of corn before funneling it in through the windows. She knew that Hell could be no worse. The pots of boiling water for blanching the produce, sterilizing the empty jars and heating the filled jars poured steam and humidity into the room. The pot of syrup added sticky sugar to the steam that settled on the skin of her face and bare arms giving a hint of sweetness to the salty sweat she licked off her upper lip.

My grandmother canned everything: tomatoes, corn, peas, string beans, lima beans and even strawberries which my mother said were soft and gushy and hideous to eat. Grandma made preserves and pickles. Everything was put up in quart jars except the jams and jellies that went into little jelly glasses. Bushels and bushels of produce were processed. Anything they didn't raise was purchased from a neighbor when it was ripe, plentiful and inexpensive. Fruit would wait on the kitchen porch until it was time for canning. Even years later when Grandma was alone and made only small batches of jam each year, that porch retained the sour sweetish odor of overripe fruit.

After the jars had cooled, they were taken down to the basement and put in a special store room with thick cool concrete walls lined from floor to ceiling with shelves. By the time I was old enough to notice there were few jars left, just some peaches and jam. I imagine Grandma, in her apron, standing in the middle of that room, looking with satisfaction at the shelves packed with quart jars of yellow-orange peaches, bright green beans and small jars of sweet purple, Concord grape jelly.

I got my own small taste of "Grandma with a project" one time when I was there for a visit. She decided I needed to know how to kill and prepare my own chicken. She must have done this regularly since she had a special stump in the back yard and a hatchet ready for the task, but it was a first for me. I absolutely refused to wield the hatchet. I wish I could remember how Grandma held that flailing chicken with one hand and lopped off its head with the other. All details were wiped from my mind when the headless copper red bird jumped off the chopping block and began running around the back yard, flapping its wings and squawking. Afraid the demon would get me I ran around the yard, apron flapping between my legs, squealing as well. Grandma grabbed my arm and stopped me up short. "When it stops, pick it up by the feet and bring it to the porch steps." My next job was to pluck the bird. I sat on the shady steps, staring out at the horse chestnut trees that lined the back of the yard, plucked feathers and put them in a bushel basket. I could hear the steady drone of a lawn mower in the distance. It was all tedious but the pin feathers were worst since they held firm and were hard to grasp. Grandma used heat to finish that job. After the bird was naked, we chopped it up. Again, I don't remember which part I did, but both Grandma and I were neck to knee in bloody aprons and holding butcher knives when someone knocked on the back door. The whole grizzly ordeal was worth it just to see the face of the neighbor boy who mowed her lawn as I opened the door. I was still holding the knife in my right hand. I couldn't resist an evil menacing leer when I saw him. The poor boy could only stare until Grandma came up behind me with her knife and said, "I'm a little busy now. Can I pay you tomorrow?" We could barely hear his response as he fled down the stairs and was gone.

I have never again had occasion to butcher my own chicken, and I don't take the time to bake my own pies. My life is so different from my grandmother's that I rarely even use an apron. But, like Grandma, I'm economical and need a lot of storage room since I have plenty to store. While Grandma owed her bounty to nature and her own labor, I owe mine to a paycheck and Costco where I can get the legs and thighs of TEN chickens in one handy package. I can purchase peaches in quart jars as long as I buy three at a time. I can get canned tomatoes, eight cans at a time, and olive oil by the gallon. I imagine the memories of my grandchildren will be of our trips to Costco where they eat samples instead of cinnamon rolls.

I look at the aprons of my mother and grandmother and think of the love and nurturing they represent. These aprons remind me that while I may not need them now, I've been given the skills to feed my family even if it means killing chickens to do it. Now, can anybody tell me where I would find a chicken?