Chatterlots

 

My grandmother belonged to a group called the Chatterlots, and they did chatter a lot. Eight friends from youth until death. Whenever they got together the laughter, giggling and sometimes tears were not unlike the gaggle of teenagers I sat next to at Starbucks in Geneva last month.

Their get-togethers would look like a period drama from the late 1800s as they arrived dressed in their hats and gloves even into the late sixties. I would never have asked, but I bet most of the eight women wore corsets rather than bras. They would be far more utilitarian than the one in the photo above.

At one point, these women, who considered travel a trip to Cape Cod or Franconia Notch in New Hampshire. took a train to from Boston to Washington D.C. where the alternated short sheeting beds, in their hotel with visits to historic places.

I remember one of their meetings at our house. Rather than serve the usually tea and treats, my mother helped my grandmother put together an ice cream buffet with strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream, bananas, nuts, chocolate sauce and hot butterscotch sauce, an ice cream bar so to speaking.

"Ladies, let's go into the bar," my grandmother said.

"Bar," came the horrified voices. Having lived through the turn of the 20th century, the battle for the vote, Spanish Flu, WWI, the depression, WWII, Korea they were still convinced FDR was a disaster and prohibition was the right thing to do.

Relief when they saw the spread and the various sundaes and banana splits were made and consumer admid ohs and ahs.

Maybe they never made the transition to modern times, but they had something women have needed and relied over centuries -- friendship.