February 6, 2018 – Kissing Dutch Couple Statues

         The spring garden catalogs in the daily mail haven’t let up a single bit these last several days during my crash landing in bed with the flu/cold.  In between locating something hot to drink to stay hydrated and grabbing another box of tissues, I sort the incoming mail into piles of bills and catalogs.  I am just now getting to the garden catalogs.

         Kissing Dutch Couple statutes are back and being touted as iconic cuteness - how marvelous! Part of me wants to crawl into the photo closet and dig out a picture of the cement Dutch kissies [what I called them] when we lived in Delaware.  Part of me says mental memories are easier on the knees than digging in old dusty photo albums packed away.  The latter thought won the argument.

         At the time, we were living in Seaford, Delaware, which is widely known for the E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co., chemical plant started back in 1939.  I must admit, I don’t know if DuPont Company still exists under that name or another, but it was a perfect example of a “company town” or “mill town” that employed more DuPont workers than any other employer.  My husband was employed elsewhere in the area, but when the DuPont employees received increases in wages, all commodities in town went up – milk, bread, gas, etc.  A bitter pill to swallow if you were not a DuPont employee as your wages didn’t keep up with the cost of living.

         The area was steeped in history and it was a step back in time for us when we moved there.  More importantly, a step back in time for me, as a woman, personally. I had to supply a copy of our marriage certificate to the insurance company in order to get insurance on our home and autos because I was one of those ‘modern women’ who decided to keep her maiden name when she married. I had to prove we were married and not just living together.  I also could not get the electricity, natural gas, and the telephone turned on or the accounts even opened as I was a mere woman and only the “husbands” were allowed to do that, which struck me odd.  Every previous corporate move, as his corporate wife, I’d turned utilities on and off without my husband in attendance.  I was forced to make that embarrassing phone call to my husband at his place of work to tell him I had failed at such a simplistic corporate wife duty as turning on the electric. He had to leave work and come to the electric company office as well as trot around with me to the natural gas office and even the telephone office.  

Another archaic throwback was even more shocking to me.  I tried to open a new savings account at a bank with a cashier’s check [proceeds from our closed savings account from another state] and I was not allowed to open the account because I hadn’t yet obtained a job in the area.  I was cited some sort of strange rule that you must be employed in the state before you can deposit money in a bank.  Yet, my husband had a job here? I immediately wondered, so they don’t want anyone to “retire here?” 

I’d suddenly been reduced to a second class citizen due to my gender by just crossing the state line? You can bet we didn’t bank with that particular lender, but again, my husband had to accompany me to the bank in order to open up a simple joint checking and joint savings account.  There was no such thing as me setting it up and my husband dropping by to sign a signature card like we had done many times in the past in other states.

The above, unnecessary hurdles in moving to a new area for my husband’s new corporate job, tarnished our opinions of quaint, old-world,  Seaford, Delaware, and the area for several months.

         Sorry - I digressed a bit – but when I am reminded of Seaford, Delaware, whether it is a crab cake recipe, the sailboats we owned, friends, or the rich local history, I first remember the rough start of our settling in and not the fabulous memories of the time spent there during our colorful corporate life.

Back to the Kissing Dutch Couple Statutes:  We had settled in and as usual, we invited my parents down for a little visit/vacation.  We turned my Mom and Dad into world travelers visiting us at all the places we landed during our many corporate moves.

Showing my parents around the Delmarva area, I pointed out Dutch Kissing statues in people’s gardens or near their front doors or mailboxes.  I thought they were darling, [a phrase I picked up living in Delaware] and of course, my Mom agreed.  I had yet to find where you could buy them.  During their visit, we discovered the area was predominantly settled by the Dutch in Lewes, Delaware, [the first town in the state] in 1787, so we assumed the reason behind so many little Dutch boy and Dutch girl lawn ornaments.

Surprisingly, my husband and Dad found a source, and we drove out to a cement lawn ornament place.  Each flat-sided cement Dutch girl or Dutch boy was molded around a 36-inch rebar. Daddy opened his wallet and gladly paid for a set as our ‘house warming gift.’  It made me deliriously happy.

Both Dad and my husband complained they were heavy and awkward to pick up and carry, but the pair of “kissies” as we all called them, were stowed in the trunk safely for their ride home. I remember they were a challenge to paint, which I did to my satisfaction. Then, getting them set into the garden for everyone to admire was another challenge due to 15-inches of rebar protruding from the bottoms. You had to dig a hole for each as well as find a way to keep them upright in the extremely sandy soil of the Delmarva shore area.

         When friends visited us, they commented on them and I’d always say, “Daddy bought us the kissies.”  They were a delightful bit of whimsy.

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         Nowadays, they make them light weight out of resin, 3-D not flat, and already painted – simply darling - I think as I fold down the page to mark for future reference.

         Yes, maybe I do need to add a bit of new whimsy in my garden this year.