Aunt Leah's Tree Lot/Elaine's Kitchen/Ted's Java Blues: Thursday, December 10th!

Fame is a bee. / It has a song / It has a sting / Ah, too, it has a wing. -Emily Dickinson, poet (10 Dec 1830-1886) 

This year at Aunt Leah's Place, we set an ambitious goal to fundraise $120,000 at our Tree Lots. We are happy to announce that compared to last years record breaking sales, we are already up by $21,908! We want to send a huge thanks to those individuals who have already volunteered this year. We truly couldn't have made this progress without you. 

[Patrick James Dunn Newest Christmas Elf! Busy boy making all those toys for Santa!]

Hi Chooch and Brunello! This wasn't a test it was a high dive from 10 metre board! We saw a mongoose run across the road, at one point, in our travels! Happy Christmas from Lady Darjeeling to you both and all the family. Cheers, Patrizzio! Street vendor in Delhi at one of the many traffic jams! Taken last day of sightseeing, December 9th. Arrivederci India next day!

Forgot to mention that we saw a mongoose run across the road, at one point, in our travels! Wiring in the narrow lanes of Chandni Chowk, one of the oldest and busiest markets in Old Delhi. Took a bicycle rickshaw ride through the by-lanes. No cows so a piece of cake! Paradise for Dusty The Electrician!

Hello Patrick Thank you so much for the photos. Mount Abu looks amazing and I like the look of your vehicle with the white Langur monkeys along the roadway and on top of the van. Really liked Corinne's top--an Indian purchase as the fabric looked so cool. I would love the G&T's! Looks like you are having a wonderful time. Where are you now?? Just checking in. Fondest regards for now Jo-Anne

Hello! Thought you might enjoy these photos.... Grade 2! Christmas concert was last night. So enjoyable and well done. I seem to be running out of time to write letters etc. Boys are big and busy and need I say more? So will wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2016! Take care, Ariane 😊 ��😊

A Run on Nylons:
 
In April of 1939, DuPont Chemical introduced nylon stockings to the world at the World’s Fair in New York City. The marketing was ambitious -- as the New York Times reported, DuPont had a model named Miss Chemistry “emerg[e] from a test tube, her legs coated in a polymer boasting futuristic properties: ‘filaments as strong as steel, as fine as a spider’s web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers.’” That October, the company began selling nylon stockings for about $1.25 a pair -- twice the price of silk ones -- and despite the seemingly exorbitant price, the product was almost instantly popular. Within two years, nylon -- the first man-made fiber -- accounted for 30% of the U.S. stocking market.

But then, nylon stockings disappeared from stores throughout the country. As the Los Angeles Times recounted, after the United States entered World War II, “nylon was classified as an essential material, to be manufactured exclusively for military applications such as parachute cloth, ropes and tent fabric.” Hosiery? Not essential for beating the Axis. Supply evaporated but demand remained high -- per some reports, there was even a black market for nylons, with prices hitting $20 a pair. (Wikipedia, but alas without a cite to a primary source, goes one further: “Because nylon was so widely sought-after, it also became the target of crime. In Louisiana, one household was robbed of 18 pairs of nylons. Similarly, robbery was ruled out as the motive of a murder in Chicago because the nylons were untouched.”)

When World War II came to a close in 1945, DuPont shared some good news with its would-be customers: nylon stockings were coming back. On August 22, just days after the Japanese surrendered, DuPont announced that it would switch product back to “peace time applications” and, per the book "Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century," promised to “make enough yarn for ‘360,000,000 pairs [of nylon stockings] in a year -- 11 pairs for each woman in America.’” Unfortunately, that estimate proved to be wildly inaccurate. Shortages were the norm, but demand stayed high. As a result, when a retailer announced they had nylons in stock, women would queue up well in advance, and in huge numbers, for the chance to buy some stockings. Here's some photographic evidence:

That picture is from an announced sale of nylons in Pittsburgh in June of 1946. Per various reports, roughly 40,000 women lined up to buy stockings -- to find that only 13,000 nylons were up for sale. While the crowd was generally peaceful, some arguments broke out; the book "Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution" relays a report from a local newspaper claiming that “a good old-fashioned hair-pulling, face-scratching fight broke out in the line.” And this wasn’t something specific to Pittsburgh; long lines, short supplies, and often shorter tempers were the norm throughout the nation. The phenomenon began known as the “Nylon Riots.”
 

The nylon-driven mob scenes came to an end in late 1946. DuPont was finally able to get production up and running again to full capacity, and it delivered upon its promise to produce enough nylon for 30 million pairs per month.  

During the war, with nylons hard to come by, many women came up with a creative solution: leg makeup. The idea to simply shave one's legs and then draw a fake seam up the back. Some salons even began to offer leg makeup as a service. 

Until the end of the 1930s the best women’s stockings were made from silk. This changed in the United States when DuPont began manufacturing nylon in 1939. Nylon stockings went on limited sale in October of that year followed by a national launch at selected stores in 1940. Eager American shoppers bought up the new nylons even though they were priced the same as those made of silk. DuPont struggled to keep up with demand and American women were still complaining of shortages in 1942 when the United States joined the war. Commercial quantities of nylon stockings would not reach the rest of the world until after 1945.

Although most nylon was used to make stockings, some was bought by the American military to replace silk in the manufacture of parachutes. When the United States entered the war, DuPont shifted nylon production to a war footing and production was channeled into national defense uses, including parachutes and bomber tyres, and supplies of nylon for stockings dried up.
A new fashion arose from the nylon ration. Liquid stockings, it was called. A foundation for your legs, applied carefully and evenly for the illusion of hose. Advanced users got even more realistic by using black eyeliner pencils to draw the “seam.” Drawing in the seam-line on “Makeup” stockings with a device made from a screw driver handle, bicycle leg clip, and an eyebrow pencil.
In an attempt to drum up sales, some stores ran promotions where you could have your legs painted to see the effect or had specialist leg make-up bars where you could purchase the cosmetic and get advice on how to apply them for best effect. Helena Rubinstein was an early American advocate of the leg bar. In 1942 she opened a Bare-Leg Bar in her 5th Avenue salon. The bar featured leg make-up, special lotions, creams and cosmetics for the legs, a cooling masque for legs and feet, foot talcs and pedicure preparations. On the opening day different types of cosmetic stockings were demonstrated – stick form, out of a bottle, and sprayed on the legs.

The end of the war saw nylon stockings return to the shelves and the decline of substitutes. DuPont began producing nylon for stockings less than two-weeks after the Japanese surrendered. The resumption of limited sales of nylons in the United States produced what reporters of the time called the “nylon riots” of 1945 and 1946, as women scrambled to buy them. In those parts of the world which were economically depressed and/or clothes continued to be rationed, cosmetic stockings lingered longer and were still being sold in the 1950s, well after the war was over. The eventual disappearance of cosmetic stockings was not the end of leg make-up, it was still used by some to make the legs looked tanned. 

With nylon stockings scarce, women would paint their legs so it looked like stockings, 1942