The Coat
	During the first part of WW II I went everywhere with my mother, literally everywhere. I hadn't quite been born yet but would be here any day. Everybody everywhere was collecting and donating anything metal that they could get their hands on for the war effort. Even when I got a few years on me I joined in with all the neighborhood kids collecting tinfoil. Every kid in the neighborhood and at school had his own tinfoil ball. They were usually about the size of a large grapefruit and of course we all tried to outdo each other. All this metal collected was donated to help in the making of planes, weapons and bombs. While most of the able bodied men were off defending our country, the women at home worked in factories welding and riveting. Back then women soldiers weren't even thought of. You'd see posters showing Rosie the Riveter in neighborhood grocery stores, movie theaters, pretty much everywhere. In our house all of the wire clothes hangers had been donated and my mother had in the closet only one wooden coat hanger that she used for her winter coat. She'd pin her one blouse on the back of the coat to hang it up with two straight pins. It was white. One cool autumn day she decided to go to Ybor City to buy a few meager things for the family. Back then Ybor City wasn't the thriving nightlife Mecca that it is today. Far from it. It was just a quiet, quaint little Spanish section of Tampa with clothing stores, wonderful Cuban restaurants and probably a hundred cigar factories. Those cigar factory buildings were magnificent! Some of them still remain and have been converted into spectacular office buildings, restaurants and apartment buildings. It was always a treat for Mother to go to Ybor City and spend a quiet, relaxing day and have a nice Spanish lunch at one of the sidewalk restaurants, a real treat. I'm sure that getting away from six children, half of them tugging on the hem of her dress was a treat as well. After the running of errands in Ybor City most of the day Mother caught the bus back home about twenty miles away. It dropped her off three miles away from our house on Ellicott Street and she walked home from there. She came in and made sure we were all okay and went to the closest to hang up her coat and there still pinned on the back of her coat was her blouse. It had been there all day long. One thing about something like that, it will probably only happen to you once. Lynn Ash