I’ve been told that we do not remember scents and flavors but are only reminded of them. That may be true, for it is impossible to describe a smell or a taste without resorting to comparisons with other flavors or scents. And, we are often mystified by familiar tastes in different form. Remember those peach-colored “peanut” candies with a texture similar to stale marshmallows? They taste somewhat like bananas, but many people can’t identify the flavor because it is in an unexpected form. The same goes for baby oil, which doesn’t smell like babies; it smells like almonds.

Many years ago, my friend Bev waved a small bottle of perfume under my nose and asked what it reminded me of. Instantly, my mind flashed a vision of my mother’s long-ago lingerie drawer, and I replied without much thought, “Peach-colored underwear.” I couldn’t accurately identify the scent, and after laughing at my incongruous reply, Bev said that it was the scent of roses.

During and after WWII, most women’s underwear was made of either cotton or rayon (aside from those itchy, woolen “long johns”) and, as rayon turned yellowish after being laundered, many people preferred to buy it in a shade of peach that masked the unattractive yellowing caused by laundry soaps. Yes, Mother kept a rose-scented sachet in her lingerie drawer. I think it rather odd that that little whiff of perfume didn’t bring a vision of roses rather than the startling image of my mother’s dresser drawer full of peach colored rayon slips and panties.

Man-made fabrics have made great strides since the days of rayon, and we now enjoy beautiful, durable, comfortable lingerie and blouses that are a pleasure to wear. One of the things for which I am most grateful are the stockings we have today. They fit, they stay up, they are comfortable, warm, and attractive, and they don’t stretch out of shape or require darning. Probably one of the main reasons I enjoy going barefoot is because I always hated stockings when I was a child. Full-length winter stockings in the 1930’s were made of cotton or cotton/wool blends. They came in brown, white, and tan, and they required an uncomfortable garter-belt to keep them up. The wool blends were itchy and tended to shrink when laundered. The white ones were saved for “dress” as they required extra care in laundering. For school and play, we wore the tan ones, and Mother tried to convince us that they were the same color as our skin and were unnoticeable. They also stretched out of shape within ten minutes of donning them, wrinkled around our knees, and worked their way down into our shoes as we walked to school.

In warmer weather, we wore anklets. These were nearly always white, had cuffs that stretched so much that they resembled ruffles after a few wearing’s, and we could hardly walk across a room without having to stop and pull them up, as they worked their way down over our heels and bunched up around our insteps. There was no finer day than when Mother decreed that it was warm enough for us to wear sandals or tennis shoes without stockings, or – joy of joys – to go barefoot! My hatred of stockings was well founded, I thought, and I was fairly unimpressed by Mother’s frequent reminder that my German grandmother, who was taught to knit at a young age, had to knit her own stockings or go without. I would have been blissfully happy to have had that option.

My dad’s glamorous sister who lived in Milwaukee and worked at a high-end department store, often sent “grown-up” gifts to me and my sisters when we were still in our early teens. One of those unlikely things was nylon stockings, and dainty, feminine compartmented pouches to store them in. In the 1940’s, fashion still dictated that stockings have a seam up the back, and much time and twisting was spent getting (and keeping) those seams straight. During the war when stockings were scarce and expensive, many women stained their legs with make-up and replaced the seams with lines drawn with eye-brow pencils. Eventually, came the mid – 1950’s and L’eggs were born.