It stood alone in a corner of the room, it's fine finished wooden cabinet covered with a handmade lace tablecloth. On top was a glass cake dish with a metal cover. Under the tablecloth you could see it's four cast iron legs. Setting there silently in the center you could also see the foot pedal, but the silence didn't last forever.

   We would watch with eager anticipation as our grandmother or aunt removed the cake dish from the top of the cabinet. Next was the white tablecloth as it was carefully folded and gently placed up and out of harm's way. Now the finished wood of the cabinet came into view. You could make out the finished grain of the hardwood, a true masterpiece, all polished with furniture polish.

   Watching her every move she slowly lifted the hindged lid of the cabinet, almost doubling the expanse of the tabletop. Opening the lid also revealed a hole in the center of the table. Reaching into the hole she lifted a black object that was also hindged at the backside. It now sat upright on the cabinet and you could read the brandname in gold capital letters......SINGER. A design also in gold, was engraved on both sides of the name.

   I always thought that the machine was named after the inventer. Thinking back now, I'm sure it was named after the tune it produced as the machine was being used. My grandmother sewed quite slow due to her age and sometimes poor eyesight. The tune it sang while she sewed was mostly a slow quiet song. My aunt on the other hand was truely a top notch musician on this machine. She mastered the manual pedal with great expertise and made the machine sing like a great opera soloist. The pedal clattered like a roaring freight train coming down the tracks, while the machine hummed contently. The silver needle moved rapidly up and down making a tapping sound as it stitched any material she fed into it.

   What truly really amused us was how this machine enabled us to self teach ourselves about the physics of machinery. We studied this machine very closely as her foot moved up and down on the pedal. Noticing the medal rod attached to the pedal, we were able to trace it up under the machine to the lower wheel. There was a rubber belt around this wheel.......interesting! The pedal moved the rod which turned the lower wheel. This wheel moved the belt which was turning the upper wheel. The rest was easy to understand for we had already traced the needle to the upper wheel as it moved.

   Both my grandmother and my aunt are no longer with us anymore and neither is the machine. With us though is the memory of the machine and the people who mastered it. It was something that was with me throughout all my childhood, but was forgotten as I moved from late adolessence into adulthood. Today, almost fifty years later it is part of my life again, as a memory; a very fond memory that will stay with me forever.