Purse, Pocketbook, Handbag
What do you carry with you and what do you carry it in?
I kept a quarter in my shoe in high school. A phone call on a pay phone was a dime, and a quarter could get you two phone calls.
Girls were told, or just knew, to keep a dime, or quarter, in a shoe, in case we had to use a pay phone to say, “Please come get me.”
We might not have much money. We might not carry a purse. We may or may not drive yet, or have access to a car. But a pay phone could get us a call to a parent, or a friend, in case we needed to get away from a situation.
The friend you went with was drinking or drunk. You had been drinking. Your ride disappeared. The boy you came with disappeared.
Hopefully, you never had to use that quarter.
I thought about that quarter when I came across chatelaines, a remnant of the Victorian era and earlier substitutes for purses. A chatelaine started as a practical assemblage of what a woman might need — small scissors, smelling salts, a spectacle case, a key, and a coin purse big enough for one coin.
Since most ladies’ dresses didn’t have pockets, a chatelaine was a set of chains that were latched on to the waistband, or dangled from a broach. They might be practical — as in the head housekeeper’s…
