Episode 51 - Companion to Episode #309 Mum's the Word - J Schwanke's Life in Bloom

Mums shatter.

It's a

really cool thing.

So when petals fall out of a mum, even one or two, the entire bloom will shatter.

That's why we would wax them back in the day.

So what that meant was when we were making a football mum that people would wear to a football game, right? We'd turn them upside down and drip wax on the calyx.

Like

from a candle,

right? Hot wax, yeah.

Just dripping in there.

And so you would wax mums.

And as a little kid, I learned how to wax mums and I would wax them because when I was a little kid in the 60s, football mums were a big deal.

And so we would do that, but especially for homecoming corsages.

And you would always want to warn people that like if they hugged with their homecoming corsage, it could shatter it and stuff like that too.

But I also think it was interesting that the reason that people had homecoming mums was that you had a homecoming mom and it wasn't for the dance.

It was for the football game.

You would buy a homecoming mom.

Traditionally, you would have whatever color of mom would be traditional for the team.

Go Big Red was red and white.

So you'd have white football moms for Nebraska Cornhuskers.

For Fremont Tigers, we were black and gold.

So you would have a gold mom.

You know, some places would have purple moms and some places would dye moms.

They would also do that.

So you would wear them and then you would put the like on our gold ones for Fremont High.

Mums shatter.

It's a

really cool thing.

So when petals fall out of a mum, even one or two, the entire bloom will shatter.

That's why we would wax them back in the day.

So what that meant was when we were making a football mum that people would wear to a football game, right? We'd turn them upside down and drip wax on the calyx.

Like

from a candle,

right? Hot wax, yeah.

Just dripping in there.

And so you would wax mums.

And as a little kid, I learned how to wax mums and I would wax them because when I was a little kid in the 60s, football mums were a big deal.

And so we would do that, but especially for homecoming corsages.

And you would always want to warn people that like if they hugged with their homecoming corsage, it could shatter it and stuff like that too.

But I also think it was interesting that the reason that people had homecoming mums was that you had a homecoming mom and it wasn't for the dance.

It was for the football game.

You would buy a homecoming mom.

Traditionally, you would have whatever color of mom would be traditional for the team.

Go Big Red was red and white.

So you'd have white football moms for Nebraska Cornhuskers.

For Fremont Tigers, we were black and gold.

So you would have a gold mom.

You know, some places would have purple moms and some places would dye moms.

They would also do that.

So you would wear them and then you would put the like on our gold ones for Fremont High.