My sock darner
From the archives of Paul Corbin
I never was very good at discarding or throwing away anything, so I was not really surprised when I was going through my sock drawer and discovered about 14 pairs of socks where one sock was in good condition and the other one had a hole in it. I am not sure what my thinking was, when I crammed these socks down in the bottom draw. Did I think that the hole in the one sock would eventually heal up, and I would have a good pair of socks again? Or maybe I was thinking that I would run across another pair just like the pair that I was relegating to this secluded place, and in that way I would have one pair and one good spare.
Then I remembered that when I was a kid growing up out on Cato Slough, my mother used to darn all our socks.
Back then, a pair of socks cost about a quarter, and you didn't just run out and buy a new pair every time you got a hole in one. Mom even had a "sock darner." This sock darner was not a regular factory-made darner, because the factory made-darner would cost about fifty cents, so she saved half a dollar--just like that--by making her darner out of a small gourd.
Now, I have always thought that I could do just about anything that anyone else could do, so I decided to grow myself a sock darner and go to work on these 14 pairs of socks.
This whole project started about two years ago, and my first attempt was a complete failure, as all of my gourds grew too large to go inside my socks.
So the next spring I would try again. This time I would try to manipulate Mother Nature, and coax her into producing some small gourds. I planted a few seeds on April 15, a few more on May 1, and another planting on May 15. On the early planting, the gourds all grew too large, and even on the late planting it looked like everything was going to be too large, so I started clipping about 50 percent of the leaves off some of the vines, which seemed to stunt the growth and I wound up with several small gourds, which would make excellent sock darners.
Now all I had to do was learn how to darn the sock.
I figured I might have some trouble threading a needle, so I searched the place over and finally found one about the size of a matchstick. The thimble, I was unable to use. It must have been a left-handed one. The yarn I found was about two shades darker than the white sock I was trying to darn. I also punctured a few fingers and was temped to use a few words that I had not learned in Sunday school, but I finally finished darning the darn thing.
I did close up the hole in the sock, but the place where the hole was looked like a last year's bird nest.
Now, if I can find a one-legged man, I will sell him 13 socks mighty cheap, and I will even throw in a slightly used sock darner to boot.
Advance resident Paul Corbin will be 101 years old on November 27, 2015.
Comments
- -- Posted by goat lady on Wed, Mar 25, 2015, at 7:27 AM
- -- Posted by Dexterite1 on Wed, Mar 25, 2015, at 7:49 PM
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