By ANNA GILGOFF

Special to The Press

A stack of neatly folded aprons rests on one of the chairs in Bev Gruber’s office behind the Ritz Barbecue at the Allentown Fairgrounds.

Gruber will be taking them to Heidelberg Church March 7 where she will be speaking to the H.A.R.P. group about these special aprons she has collected throughout the years.

“This is my speech basically,” she said, holding a binder filled with text.

“My mother wanted me to do this, so I do it for my mother, though I just love getting out among all these people.”

Gruber said that in the days when a woman’s place was unquestionably in the home, one thing women always had was a drawer full of neatly ironed aprons.

“For many of us, aprons offer a nostalgic connection to our past,” Gruber said. “Most of us think of our grandmas baking that apple pie or Aunt Jane carving the Thanksgiving turkey, wearing their aprons.”

Gruber’s apron collection brings back rich memories of her own childhood.

“Heading into a storage room on our farm there were combinations of aprons I wore as a little kid,” she recalled. “Later, as a home economics teacher, people gave me stuff, aprons among them.”

As historical artifacts, some aprons document food trends.

“I talk about the aprons and what foods came along at the time they were made,” said the New Tripoli resident.

“Cheesecake for example was introduced in the 1940s in Better Homes and Gardens.

“M&Ms came about as a result of the war and our troops being far away.

“We wanted to get chocolate to them without melting, which led to M&Ms.”

These days, Gruber says, aprons are enjoying a comeback.

“It’s more of a nostalgia thing than anything,” she said. “They’re a connection to the past and that makes people feel good,”

People are enthusiastic about sharing their own collections.

“I gave a program to about 35 people in the Kutztown area where I asked them to bring an apron that had special meaning and talk about them,” she said. “Once you give the talk, people give you aprons. I also recruited two women who agreed to judge needlework, if we needed them at the fair.”

Gruber’s connection to agriculture is in her blood.

“I was born in 1943 and I was raised on a dairy farm,” Gruber said. “At that time you went to the local granary to buy cow feed which was sold in bags of fabric.

“I remember going with my sister and picking out the feedbags we liked.

“Grandma made our dresses out of the feed bags and our mom made dresses out of the feed bags.

“The guy in that granary must have hated to see us coming.

“We’d get feed every couple of weeks.”

Gruber said the feed mill was in a town called Barkeyville, in Yenango County, about half way between Pittsburgh and Erie.

“I lived in a town called Emlenton, 15-20 minutes away,” she explained.

Her family would vacation every year at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

“We would get up at 5 a.m. and drive to Harrisburg,” Gruber said.

“My mother entered this apron and I still have the ribbon she won.”

In addition to her personal connection to her aprons, Gruber highlighted their cultural significance as well.

“If you helped somebody out with a wedding, you would get an apron as a thank you,” Gruber explained.

Wedding celebrations were more modest in the middle of the last century.

“You were there to help serve cake and ice cream at the local fire hall,” Gruber said. “That’s all they had in the late ’50s.

“If the bridesmaids wore orange dresses, the aprons would be orange.”

Beyond her attachment to her apron collection, Gruber wears other hats.

“I’m the chairman and CEO for the Allentown Fair, the first woman to hold that position, by the way,” she said with a smile.

This is a year-round job that includes numerous responsibilities, the biggest of which is to be sure that everything runs well, from the show in Ag Hall to the actual fair operations, Gruber explained.

“We have a lot of people who lease from us, for instance,” she said.

“And though we have employees who handle that, I have to sign the contracts.

“I was a home economics teacher in my first life but I haven’t taught since 1972.”

Still, her calendar is full with her work at the fair, speaking engagements and involvement with the annual farm show in Harrisburg.

Not to mention she still lives in an old log cabin dating back to 1926.

She held up a small apron with a Leh’s Department store tag still pinned on. It read $1.25.

Over time, a lot has changed, but Gruber remains unflustered.

“You just take one day at a time,” she said. “I still have fun.”