The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Our lasting, loving ties to aprons
I feel terribly amiss if I’m not wearing an apron while working in the kitchen. That’s like a handyman without a tool belt or a gardener without gloves and shears in the back pocket.
The simple design of an apron — the word stems from the old French “napron,” meaning a small piece of cloth — belies its functionality. Aprons keep stains off clothes and protect the skin from burns and marks. Ones with pockets are convenient for stashing pens and dish towels, although a quick front-tie around the tummy does just as good a job. In a pinch, the bottom corners of an apron can serve as a makeshift pouch, to haul a harvest from garden to house.
But they also tug at the heartstrings of us apron people. Each apron has a story.
I’ve been an apron lady for more than 25 years, beginning around the time that I became a home cook with a young family living on a tight budget. The collection has grown to double digits.
My lightweight, breezy white apron brings back memories of August days sweating in a steamy kitchen without air conditioning, and nearly blistering my fingertips as I slid the skins off blanched peaches and tomatoes for canning.
During the uncertain early days of the pandemic, my two denim aprons became my protective attire of choice, precisely for their heaviness. While some worrywarts lived in their pajamas, I strapped on my trusty blue aprons for weeks on end. Like a weighted blanket used to treat PTSD and insomnia, my durable denim aprons provided daytime stress relief.
Aprons gifted to us are especially endearing, like my Bistro de Paris brown one with a rooster in the center. That was a present from a friend when my family enthusiastically jumped aboard the backyard
chicken farming bandwagon a dozen years ago.
Some aprons remind us where we’ve been. Like the day in 2015, when I stood in the kitchen at a Bojangles in Marietta, with master biscuitmaker Luis Santos, to learn the 48-step process for making the chain restaurant’s famed biscuits.
My “Gotta be NC” apron was swag given to me at a food festival in Asheville, North Carolina. It was my first visit to that mountain city, and what a trip that was. I remember sitting on a bench late at night with my chef hero, Jose Andres. We chatted for upwards of an hour about his hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico, his family and other stuff that drives him to keep going.
The next night, I ate alone at the bar in Katie Button’s Spanish tapas place, Cúrate, until I befriended Drunk Heather, which is how I still have her listed in my phone contacts. Gotta be NC, indeed.
Some folks buy souvenir coffee mugs or keychains on their travels — not apron people. “I try to collect some from everywhere I go,” said Jenny Willis, the 82-year-old mother of chef and Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributing food writer Virginia Willis. Jenny’s 20-plus apron collection includes one from a “fancy hotel” in West Palm Beach, Florida; another from Greece; and still others from Alaska, Mexico and Maine.
Bill King, an AJC retiree who continues to edit and write food stories for us, told me about a special apron purchased more than 40 years ago, while on a trip to Wales to visit family. Bill’s wife, Leslie, likes the apron for its practicality. It’s vinyl on the outside, which means splatters won’t soak through to your clothes, as can happen with cloth aprons.
But the real significance of the apron is the design, because it’s a reminder of Bill’s proud Welsh heritage. “The apron shows the Welsh flag, which has a red dragon passant on a green and white field and the motto ‘Y ddraig goch ddyry cychwyn,’ which means ‘The red dragon will show the way,’” Bill explained. “And it has the Prince of Wales’ crest (with the ostrich feathers) at the bottom and ‘Cymru,’ which means Wales in the Welsh language.”
If someone ever has sewn an apron just for you, you’ve got a real treasure on your hands. AJC reader Marlene Fellows wrote to me in detail about the one her mother made for her when she was a little girl. “It has one big divided pocket all across the front, to hold all the little things you’d pick up as you were cleaning around the house. I wore it many, many times — so many happy memories of hours spent baking,” she reminisced.
While rooting through a cedar chest in her attic, Jenny Willis recently discovered the apron her mom sewed for her when she was 3 years old. “I saw it and almost cried,” she said of the simple white cloth with blue trim. “It looks pitiful, but Mama made it, so that’s why I kept it.”
Julia Distelhurst, 73, of Thomasville, had a similar surprise when she recently found an apron that belonged to her mother, Bertie Durrance Distelhurst, who passed away in 2016. The apron was one that Bertie’s mother, Sally Whaley Durrance, sewed for her daughter when she was 3 years old.
“She was born in 1917, so that apron is well over 100 years old!” Julia said. Were it not for a note tucked into the pocket, bearing Bertie’s handwriting — “Bertie apron when a little girl” — Julia never would have known that the worn, browncheck apron was a family heirloom.
Julia is rich in heirloom aprons. She has the one that Sally sewed for Bertie when Bertie got married in 1940. And then there’s the apron Sally sewed for Julia that conjures happy childhood memories of visits from the door-to-door salesman known as the Jewel Tea Man.
“There was this guy that would come to your door every two weeks,” Julia explained. “Dressed in suit, tie, dress hat. And he had this suitcase-type thing. He would open the suitcase and it would have cubicles of things like mixing bowls, toaster, dishes. Everything was in miniature doll size. And you would shop — because women didn’t have much access to cars.
“You could get food items, just about anything. He would come back two weeks later and bring you what you bought,” Julia said. “My mother, grandmother and aunt probably kept Jewel Tea in business.”
Among the things that Sally purchased from the Jewel Tea Man were a set of dishes and a bolt of matching fabric.
Ever the homemaker, Sally turned those yards of cloth into kitchen curtains, napkins and, of course, aprons. “My sister and two cousins all have that apron,” Julia said. “Aprons were a big thing in our family. Everybody had them.”
Julia’s adult children still tend to associate aprons with the family’s womenfolk. “My daughter remembers her grandmother and great-grandmother all wearing aprons,” she said. “She remembers how all of them would use their skirts and aprons to take things out of the oven.”
While aprons conjure memories from the past, they also become part of new memories that we create every time we put them on and get to work in the kitchen. That’s what happens when AJC reporter and dining critic Henri Hollis cooks with his mother, Harriett Hollis, in their matching Hedley & Bennett aprons. “We have to work hard not to get them mixed up,” Henri said.
When my mom died earlier this year, I claimed dibs on her apron, but I haven’t cooked in it just yet. I’m saving that for special occasions, like Thanksgiving and Christmas — holidays when she would cook up a storm. The apron ties most certainly will bind us.