I often wonder about the lives of the machines that end up on my workbench. Have they been put to work making kids' clothes? Prom or wedding dresses? How many people have learned to sew on this one? When a new one comes my way, I like to glean the information that I can from the person passing it on to me. Often the stories are unknown, but sometimes I get to hear bits and pieces of the machine's history. This story of a machine surviving a house fire was definitely a first for me!
I found this Singer 301 on one of the For Sale sites in my area - listed for free, and stated that the owner needed it gone or it was headed to the dump. It being a great machine, and me worried about the state of our world with too much in the dumps already, I messaged and said that I'd pick it up if no one else came along. So there I was picking it up the next day, chatting about its origins with the grandson of the original owner. It had been a gift to his grandmother Doris upon her retirement from Klikitat County as a Deputy Auditor. She had retired in the early 1970s (the ISMACS database dates the machine to the 1950s - not sure how those two pieces of information fit together). Eventually the machine ended up at Doris' granddaughter's house, where it went through a house fire. Thankfully no one was hurt, and the 301 was protected inside of her cabinet. I'm guessing it wasn't too close to the fire, because the damage was mostly cosmetic and there wasn't evidence of excessive heat on the plastic parts.
I'm happy to say that with some TLC and lots of elbow grease, Doris The Sewing Machine is happily sewing along like nothing happened. I tell ya, these machines will sew forever.
Doris has gone to a new home, and since the new owner didn't want the cabinet, I found another local 301 owner who was excited to clean and refinish it.
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