Ardeana Hamlin’s By Hand column from Aug. 23, 2005, about aprons inspired a Garland reader to share her memories.

Some [of your columns] bring interesting memories, [for example] of my mother at the clothesline as I came up the road from our one-room schoolhouse on late fall afternoons. It was important to get [the clothes] in before they got damp.

As a girl I didn’t like to wear an apron and as soon as I got outside I would hang it on the hitching post. Later, I lived with an elderly lady, who wore out the sides of her aprons where she wiped her floury hands.

When I was a kid, a friend’s mother, a jolly lady who had a short husband, cut off the bottoms of his denim overalls and made “belly aprons” – very durable – for herself.