Anna Marie McCrary Nason – Inventory Blog Two

A common theme in Mama’s house was the color burnt orange and brass. She had these two demi tasse cups sitting with a brass rooster and a ceramic bowl with a burnt orange design on top of an antique table that she got from Mary Frances Hopkins, a dear friend that lived down the street when we lived in the little green house on Eugene Street. That table now sits in my sister, Lindy Weiner’s home in Baton Rouge. She also kept the rooster and ceramic bowl, I believe, while I took the two cups. They are not of value. Mama bought them at my mother-in-law’s gift shop, Ann Metcalf’s, in Baton Rouge. They are from Fritz and Floyd. They go well with my crawfish platter which we also got at the gift shop.

Mama was an excellent seamstress. Not only did she make my wedding dress, but she made my sister’s bride’s maid dress as well. And that Mark and I gave her about six weeks to plan the entire wedding, it was a tall order, but she finished both quickly. The piping on the sleeve and the handsewn buttons on the back bodice were the only tedious parts. The buttons were just adornment sew on top of the zipper flap. But from the back it looked as though they were real. While she sewed the dresses, I sewed my going away outfit, a two-piece pants suit, white waffle pique jacket dress and bell-bottom pants. Underneath I wore a long-sleeve brown dotted Swiss blouse which I bought at a little boutique.

She was known for sewing the white and navy-blue pleated skirts that were the uniform for the girls at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge. She made them in bulk for a local dress shop who paid her for the work. She made extra money by making, mending, and hemming the green uniform that the BRHS Boosters wore when they marched on the field at football game halftime. And then when I was in elementary school, Walnut Hills Elementary had a fall bazaar in which she dressed small plastic dolls in evening gowns. They were donated and sold to raise money for the school. Each was different and all beautiful and treasured. My doll’s evening gown was blue sateen.

When she wasn’t sewing, she was needlepointing. I took these birds she made and had them framed soon after she died in 1991. She had finished the design but ran out of time to get framed. 

She also crocheted afghans. This one hanging in the front of an antique quilt top and bed coverlet, was not finished when she died. But I had all the yarn and so completed it. I love covering myself with it when I take naps in the cool afternoons. But it was her crewel embroidery patterns that I treasured.

I think I found at least ten projects she had started most were crewel, some were cross stitched, and others were others forms of needlepoint, like petit-point using tiny stitches. This pillow she embroidered was never actually made into a pillow. I just slipped it on a pillow form but didn’t sew it closed. Not sure why. I just never got around to doing it. It sits on the day bed in my guest bedroom/office.

Mama loved brass accessories. This brass frame is not only ornate but heavy. I believe it belonged to her mother Claudia McCrary as I vaguely remember seeing it on the mantel in her home on Blouin Avenue in Baton Rouge. When Claudie got sick with the cancer and she and Papa moved into the apartment upstairs from the Mama and Daddy, a lot of their furniture eventually found a home in my parent’s apartment. I remember it sitting on what Jennifer affectionately calls “Jack’s” table because after he moved into the nursing homes, Lindy had the table, and she gave it to Jennifer who remembered it in her grandfather’s apartment. It’s a beautiful heavy walnut cabinet with an even prettier marble top. The brass frame sat on that table when my parents had it in their home. Today, it sits on the bed table on Mark’s side of the bed in our bedroom. He wanted a picture of Hayden, and we slipped this one of him when he was very young. It makes him smile to see that sweet precious face of his only grandson.

Another piece of brass that Mama loved was her tea and coffee service that she got also at Ann Metcalf Gifts. Owned by Mark’s mother and father, it was a beautiful gift shop in Baton Rouge that first opened on Perkins Road not far from our house on Eugene Street in South Baton Rouge. Later, just before I met Mark, they closed that store and moved to the Twin Cedars Shopping Center on Jefferson Highway. This was a very high-end area of town with fast growing expensive large neighborhoods. Still the university area and South Baton Rouge customers followed them and everyone who knew Ralph and Annie Ruth loved them. After Mama died much of what they had Daddy said for us kids to take. I ended up with this tea service and have treasured it always. It has been on top of my piano (more on that later), my coffee tables, the mantle over the fireplace, and inside my beautiful china cabinet (more on that later, too.) It takes a lot of polishing to stay shiny and pretty, but worth it. The tray is fragile and did not come with the tea set, but she bought them together and was very proud of this piece of brass. 

Anna Marie McCrary Nason – Gifts From the Past - One

 

Mama liked to collect things and I inherited a lot. I’m glad I did. Every piece has been a special part of my life as wife, mother, and grandmother. The two pottery jars were in her kitchen on Jefferson Hwy. She and Daddy moved there after they sold the white house on Eugene Street in 1970, a month or so after I married. There are no markings on the Kitchen String jar. It was new when Mama bought it. The crock pot jar is real and old. It has the number 150 hand printed on the bottom. It could mean it was the potters 150^th jar or could be 1.50 cost.

It was a beautiful apartment with a large living room with sliding doors out to a brick patio surrounded by a brick privacy wall on three sides. A galley kitchen and small dining room were next to the living room. There was a large opening at the dining room and a smaller opeing at the other of the kitchen which led down the hallway to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms. A little table, a wooden rocking chair that belonged to Daddy's grandmother, and a stool stood at the end of the kitchen. Above them was a wooden shelf that Mama had decoratd in the farmhouse style of today. She was always ahead of herself in designs. Her niece, my cousin, Amy Weiner Barham has that shelf and some of the other things that were on it in her kitchen now. 

The telephone was on the wall just inside the door of the kitchen at the hallway side. She would sit in the kitchen and drink her coffee and talk on the phone or sit there when daddy was cooking his famous rump roast recipe or make a batch of fudge.

I can remember seeing the shelf and assorted things in all the other houses she and Daddy lived in until they actually moved back into the same apartment in late 1980’s, where she died in 1991.

My parents were going to elope. They started dating at LSU when my father returned from WWII and picked back up with his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers. His best friend, Buddy Mundinger, a Kappa Alpha, was dating Joyce Quinn who was Mama’s best friend. They put the two together and it was love at first sight, at least for my father. Mama was deeply in love with her high school sweetheart, but she broke his heart when Daddy started pursuing her. Her parents never liked her boyfriend and were thrilled that Daddy came into the picture. I do believe they were in loved when they married.

The day they were to elope to the courthouse, enough family found out and a wedding at St. James Episcopal Church was set. This was the Nason family home church and Fr. Phillip P. Werlein married them. (He also Christened me in 1950.)

They didn’t have any money to speak of. It was December 12, 1948. But Mama wanted to collect a set of fine china and so picked out one. Unfortunately, they only got one dinner plate, Castleton China, made in the USA, “Devon.” The first time I saw this plate it was in the kitchen cabinet of the butler’s pantry at the white house on Eugene Street. I was about 11 years old. After Mama died, I picked it out of her things to keep and it has always had a home in my china cabinets. Today, it sits on a wooden shelf in my kitchen which ties in perfectly with the blue theme we have going in there. I sometimes wish I had tried to collect more to have at least four place settings. But that might be too late. Maybe whomever ends up with the plate will try to complete the setting.

9/4/21