The Singer Man and my sewing machine collection

After bee today, I went by Molly Green to pick up my mother's Singer sewing machine. I had brought it to the boutique in order to start sewing during business hours, but it has been in the closet since 2010 and is in need of more TLC than I am capable of giving at the moment. I drove it over to the Singer store on Montclair Ave and had a lovely conversation with Allan, the owner/dealer/mechanic.

Allan notified me that for the most part, the Singer is in excellent condition and is a model from the good old days when Singers were made to be tough and reliable. As he collected my contact info, he asked if I lived by George Ward park and I said I did. He said that when he was young, you used to be able to drive through the park - which is now a lovely neighborhood park with baseball fields, a frisbee gold course, picnic areas and a good deal of space for running your dogs. Allan told me that he drove his wife through the park and asked her to marry her dead smack in the middle. "It was very romantic then". On Sundays, years after she said "yes", he would take her back to the area and sit and watch the sun set over Birmingham at the end of their weekly joyrides. I told him that my father and I would go on joyrides on Sundays when I was a teenager. I haven't used the word joyride in such a long time. The whole environment and way of life contained within Allan's store is a throw-back to an era that I feel my generation is nostalgic for. Allan is certainly best described as mid-century modern.

I was just about to leave his shop, having been told my Singer would be ready for pickup in a day or two, when I noticed amid his sea of machines (all of them lined up like soldiers awaiting orders to head out to the front) a turquoise and chrome machine that looked very familiar. "I have a machine this exact color and even with this great R-emblazoned reverse button, but mine is an ABC Lifetime, also made in Japan". Allan told me that back in the 1950s-70s, many machines were made in Japan without the names affixed to them and then shipped to distributors in the USA, where their various names were put on, even though they were all the same model and usually shipped from the same factory. I asked Allan if he could look at my ABC Lifetime and possibly get it working again. And I'm so happy to say that he was pretty confident that he could get it running again.

In case you haven't yet seen the ABC Lifetime, it is a beaut. And I'm proud to say that it will be my fourth (working) machine if Allan is the wizard he says he is. That makes me the owner of a Bernina 180, a Janome 3128, a Singer Old-School and an ABC Lifetime Japanese "clone". Now I'll have to take in my aunt's Singer which I absconded with on my last visit to my grandfather's house in Huntsville (which I was able to do because it is supposedly broken) and I might become the mother of five working sewing machines. And happily, happily, since my need for machines is multiplying by the month. One at Molly Green, one at Inglenook, one at ArtPlay and one here, at World Headquarters. I suppose I'm safe with four...for now... 

The ABC Lifetime came in this great sewing desk...two colors that make sewing so much fun!

Check out that REVERSE button!