Dad’s handkerchiefs
My dad had a dresser drawer full of cloth handkerchiefs, and throughout his adult life he used to blow his nose in them. Later, they were laundered at home and re-used. I grew up watching him do it. It wasn’t a genteel pocket decoration, but a functional hygiene tool. It’s a generational thing. That’s what his generation and my grandparents before him did. First, because disposable tissues hadn’t been invented yet, and second, after tissues were invented, it was just customary. In its time, it was hygiene. But times change, you know? I never told him I thought it was grotesque, because that’s not what little kids said to their fathers. But ...