In the early 1970s, when I was less than ten years old, I started living in a ghost town in northern Arizona with my parents and an older brother. We had moved to the high desert because the cold, damp winters of suburban Chicago were doing a number on Dad's bronchitis. The town was chosen because we had friends from Illinois who were already there.

Employment opportunities were not at all what they were in Illinois. Work was scarce in the nearest sizable town which was 30 miles away. Nevertheless, Mom and Dad were hard workers. They were also creative. My mother, doing whatever she could to keep the family afloat, went into the manufacture and sale of purses.

Initially she used patterns learned from a family friend which she soon began modifying. She was clever and resourceful, designing everything from petite toy purses for girls to monster handbags big enough to hold whatever one needed for the care of an infant. The master stencils for hexagonal, square, or rectangular bags were made out of old cardboard cereal boxes and closely guarded by Mom.

The base material used to make the purses were the side panels of plastic bottles. Liquid bleach and detergent bottles were the best, offering sturdy, flat surfaces, usually opaque white, but sometimes pigmented - orange for ERA, red for Whisk. Milk bottles were also used, but normally they would be covered with contact paper -- wood grain, flower patterns, and the like - or one would see the backside of the cloth lining sewn into the bag. The plastic pieces were scrupulously cleaned, then cut, and holes punched around the perimeter allowing a crocheted border to be made. The crocheted pieces were sewn together with yarn. Handles were attached with metal brads to give them additional support.

The purses were Mom's affair, but the entire family helped. Obtaining enough quality raw materials with which to make the bags was a problem. The yarn and cloth were always new - bought by my mother at some sale or other. Getting the plastic bottles was the biggest hurdle. There were those that family and friends used, but they weren't enough. We went to church regularly in the larger town and, after services, made the rounds of the laundromats, finding empty bottles in the trashcans and dumpsters as well as collecting what was saved for us by managers of those establishments.

After the bottles were washed, my father and brother took tin shears and cut out the traced patterns. Holes were made using standard hand-held paper punches. This was hard work and they quickly learned to wear cloth gloves to keep from developing blisters. Mom would join in at these tasks too, but I was too small to do them. I did, however, learn to crochet and helped in this way. The assembly, with the exception of attaching handles, was mostly up to my mother.

Mom's purses found their way to far-flung shops all over northern Arizona, southern Nevada, and eastern California. My mother kept exacting records of what was placed on consignment, what moved and for how much, always refining the bags with the next round. This was done for a period of years, augmenting the income of my family at a time when extra money was sorely needed.

Biography

Timothy Cowell is a chemical engineer with a specialization in the research and development of plastics. His varied publications include short stories, interviews, and polymer science articles.

On March 9, 2006, Purse Stories received a letter from Timothy Cowell's sister. We've copied it in full below.

Hello,

I'm Tim's sister, Debby. I have a true story to tell you.

(Tim didn't mention that he had 2 older siblings that had already left home when he wrote the purse story, "Purses for Sale.")

Tim was having periodic fevers that started in 9/04. Although he went to many doctors to find the cause, none could find what was wrong. Then, on 11/08/05 the fever came back spiking to 105 degrees and never leaving. He called me (I live in South Dakota) to come and help him at Thanksgiving. My husband and I arrived that Saturday. On Monday, 11/28/05, I admitted him to the hospital for a bone marrow biopsy. He was diagnosed with end stages of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and chemotherapy was started immediately.

His oncologist did another bone marrow biopsy and it showed that there was no bone marrow activity...he wasn't producing any new blood cells. Tim was told that there wasn't any hope and he could refuse more chemo, but Tim was a fighter...he opted for a 72 hour solid chemo treatment telling his doctor that he was going to fight to the end.

He did! Approximately, 2 hours after that chemo was finished, Tim took his last breath and left us on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 @ 1:50pm.

I'm sorry to tell you in this manner. He was such a special person. As one well wisher put it, "He touched the hearts of everyone he met. He looked at the beauty in music and in people."