The old tailor who came to the door

After October, you have to rummage through boxes and cabinets, and it is customary to "change seasons" once a year.

　　Opening a camphor wood box, in the afterglow suddenly bumped into a touch of green under the box. Ah, I have been missing this green Van Li Tin silk cotton jacket for a long time. For the "break away" of clothes, I have never interrupted, how come this "old antique" has not been dealt with? Nature is reluctant!

　　The silk cotton jacket was made from the mother's cheongsam, and it was the door-to-door tailor who achieved it. To be fair, Shanghainese women can create a kind of "exquisite" decency in any limited environment, and asking a tailor to come to the door to make clothes is an example: clothes do not need to be advanced, but they must be neat and fit. Only when they are decent, can they have spirit and are not looked down upon.

　　The 1970s were an era of scarcity, fabric and cotton were supplied by ticket, and housewives had to accumulate the fabrics they usually bought and asked tailors to come to the door. My mother did not know the tailor who came to the door, but the neighbors in the alley had a road, and it was nothing more than relatives or little sisters who introduced familiar compatriots to come over. The appointment time cannot be early or late, it must be after the tenth month of the lunar calendar, because the masters have to wait until the end of the autumn harvest before they can go to the city to do life. This time point is also particularly suitable for Shanghainese people, Shanghainese talk about face, no matter whether adults and children are not dressed in the Spring Festival, where to go? The whole family's new clothes for the New Year are in the hands of the tailor.

　　So when October arrives, the neighbors will come to the door to ask for a tailor's day. As long as there are four or five appointments in a lane, then he is worth the trip. Do new clothes, old and new, as little as a week, more than ten days and a half months, put in the pocket is the net income, before the Spring Festival to return to the countryside, in the current words called "win-win". Although there were not many people with sewing machines at that time, there was no hurry, the neighbors had already made arrangements. For example, I have a sewing machine at home, but there is no operating table, and I can communicate with each other. By the time the tailor arrived, the room had been set up, the iron was resting on the countertop, a sewing machine was placed next to it, the old tailor had a leather ruler hanging around his neck, and the garment workshop was opened in a decent way.

　　I remember that my family had hired tailors three times, and the other two memories were a bit faint, but one tailor from Taizhou was impressed: he was thin, short, and carried with him a copy of the "Simple Tailoring of Clothing" published in the 1970s. This textbook is placed on the workbench every day, but I have never seen him turn it over, but we girls always rummaged through the favorite styles in it, and then chattered about doing this and doing that.

　　In addition to measuring the size and needing to communicate with people, the rest of the time Taizhou master buried his head in work and hardly spoke. We call him the "old tailor", and now where is the person who wants to wear needle leads and cut fabrics without wearing reading glasses? The old tailor arrived at 8 o'clock every morning and did not leave until 6 p.m. after dinner. During his work days, my mother changed the pattern three times a day. But the old tailor ate very finely, one bowl at a time. You must know that in those years of lack of oil and water, it was rare for men to eat only one bowl of rice. I asked my mother, why did the old tailor eat so little? My mother said that the old tailor sat inactive all day and ate too much to digest.

　　I think I was impressed by the old tailor, and it must be because of the green silk cotton jacket. My family is small, and there is not enough cloth tickets for cotton jacket blouses and spring and autumn double-purpose shirts, so my mother has her brain in old clothes with quality. She once took a piece of fur at the bottom of the pressure box and asked the old tailor to change it into the inner tank of the coat, but the old tailor shook his head and said that the fur could not be stepped on with a sewing machine, it was all stitched by hand, and there was no week to complete it. The implication is that it is expensive and uneconomical. My mother took out the green Veriting cheongsam and a silk cotton jacket that she had worn through the clip, and asked the old tailor to merge them into one and make me a cotton jacket. The old tailor stroked left and right, measured and measured, painted and painted, and the material was not enough. We thought there was no hope, but he suddenly had an epiphany and said that he could make a silk cotton jacket with a small standing collar without opening the placket, which was warm and energetic.

　　The effect is obvious, this cotton jacket has become a "model coat", the old tailor is indispensable, and I wish that the first day of the New Year will arrive immediately, and it can stink.

　　The "old tailors" have faded away in people's memories, but the scenery they sewed for Shanghai in the pinpoints of time is still evocative. (Zhang Huimin)