THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511090118
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Excuse me, but can someone tell me when - and why - curtains and bedspreads vanished from the face of the Earth.
Time was I could walk into a store, choose from 20 or 30 different styles of curtains, find some that were just right for my kitchen, go home, take the old ones down, hang the new ones on the same rod, then stand back and admire the fresh look.
Now I walk into a store and find a mind-boggling assortment of window coverings, none of which comes in the size I need or is called a curtain. I can buy swags. I can buy poofs - sometimes spelled poufs, as if a French accent would give them class. I can buy valances (flat, balloon or canopy). I can buy blinds (micro, mini or maxi; vertical or horizontal) or shades (cloth or vinyl, natural light or room-darkening, fringed or unfringed, scalloped or plain).
I can buy panels (but only one to a package) or drapes (narrow, medium or wide rod top, tab top or pinch-pleated).
I can get widths up to 150 inches, although I'll probably need a second mortgage to do so. I can get lengths up to 120 inches, providing I have cathedral ceilings and only three more payments left on my first mortgage.
I can even get drapes (but not curtains, mind you) custom-made if I'm willing to wait long enough and I've been the sole winner of last week's lottery.
What I can't get, under any circumstances, is a pair of curtains I can carry home, press and hang on the existing rod at the 45-inch-long kitchen window which, by the way, was a standard size when this house was built 20 years ago.
You can't even find the 81-inch curtains that reached from the top of the sill to the floor in every house built in the U.S. between 1945 and 1975. That's because you can't find curtains.
``No one uses curtains anymore,'' the 19-year-old gum-popping `associate' who's wearing a micro-mini and 6-inch long black fingernails tells me before she returns to the extended telephone conversation she's carrying on with her boyfriend.
If curtains are bad, bedspreads are worse. They have been replaced by comforters. That's the misnomer for something with a quilted top that ravels and no guidelines whatsoever for putting it on straight.
Because they are shorter and narrower than bedspreads, comforters do not travel through life alone. They are found in the company of shams, into which you stuff your pillows each morning, and dust ruffles, which are useless but expensive items designed to spend their days caught between box springs and mattresses.
Making a bed neatly with one requires three arms, the strength of an ox, the patience of a saint and the eye of a sharpshooter.
A good comforter set (an oxymoron) sells for about the same price as a 20-inch TV with built in VCR. A good bedspread, on the other hand, was not considered a major life purchase.
I suppose that in good time both curtains and bedspreads will come back into style. That will probably happen at just about the time that the gum-popping associate starts wearing business suits, trims her nails, hangs up on her boyfriend and realizes that the reason she's got a job is because customers need service.
I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for either event. by CNB