Doing battle with gloves and mittens ~ January 12, 1989

David Heiller

Mitten Wars Have Arrived, the tabloid headline screams. Mittens Fighting to Conquer Civilization as We Know It.

Meanwhile, back in Pine County, Minnesota...

Last Friday, as we headed out the door for the day care and Noah put on his mittens, I noticed that one was red, the other blue.

Mittens and winter and, hey, hers even match!

“You can’t wear those,” I said. “They don’t match.” There’s no surer sign of failed parenthood than when children don’t have mittens that match.

“Where are all your mittens?” I continued, looking through the shoe rack in the play room where we keep the mittens. Don’t ask why we keep mittens in a shoe rack.

“I don’t know. Maybe at day care,” Noah answered. “Maybe at Jake’s, I think.”

Noah’s friend, Jake, has a laundry basket full of hats and mittens. It’s a fine and colorful collection, and grows every time Noah visits there.

We looked through the toys on the floor of the play room, and found two mittens. They didn’t match the ones on Noah’s hands. We finally went to day care with mismatched mittens, something no self-respecting parent should allow.

This grated on me for the next 24 hours. Finally, on Saturday night, I worked up the courage to get to the bottom of the Mitten Mystery.

First I cleaned the play room, no small task in itself. Beneath the rubble, and in the shoe rack and another old diaper bag, I came up with 21 gloves and mittens which do not have a match.

Α family of four has 21 gloves and mittens with no match? I couldn’t believe it. I even took a picture for proof. (One of the gloves disappeared before I could snap the shutter, which explains why only 20 are pictured.)

My mind reeled. If four people could come up with 21 unmatched mittens, what would a family like the Bennetts of Willow River, or the Loureys of Kerrick, do? We’re talking Guinness Book of World Records here.

So Ι made a few phone calls. First I called Mary Bennett. She and Maurice have 10 children, ranging from Mike, 39, to Joseph, 20.

How did you keep track of their mittens, I asked.

Mrs. Bennett didn’t hesitate over her family secret. Maybe she heard the tremble in my voice “Safety pins were our savior, our salvation,” she answered. “When they took them off, I pinned them together and we hung them to dry, over a chair or something.” She also pinned the mitten to the sleeves of their coats and snowsuits when they were playing.

But she had help. Most of the Bennett mittens were hand-made, either by Mary’s mother, Rose DeRungs, or a kindly neighbor lady, Mary Okronglis. The mittens were distinctive, almost like works of art. That helped keep track of them, Mrs. Bennett said graciously.

“I always had a bunch, five or six, without mates after I sorted,” Mrs. Bennett admitted. “That is something to keep track of the mittens and keep enough dry ones on hand.”

The Mitten Wars aren’t over for Mrs. Bennett. Those 10 children have brought 20 grandchildren, and there’ll be 20 more before the battle ends. That’s OΚ with Mrs. Bennett.

“I still have their mittens in a cardboard box marked ‘Mittens,’ and when the grandchildren come to play, they wear the mittens their moms and dads wore when they were little,” Mrs. Bennett said. That’s a nice thought.

And what about the Lourey clan in Kerrick, Becky and Dal and their 11 kids, from Tim, 25, to Nick, 10?

“Mittens never seemed to drive me crazy,” Becky claimed.

That may be true, but remember, nothing drives Becky crazy, not even Doug Carlson. And Becky handled the challenge of the Mitten Wars the same way she handles her political campaigns. She invented a Mitten Rack. Oliver Wilson, an old Moose Lake welder, transferred the idea to steel. He used heavy pieces of metal, about three feet long, with five-inch hooks welded up and away from this base, about an inch and a half apart. These Lourey Mitten Mounts, all nine feet worth and spray painted tractor orange, line the wall by the woodstove in the basement, waiting for soggy gloves and mitts. Another set of racks away from the stove holds the mittens which are dry and ready for use.

In their prime, each Lourey child had about four pairs of mittens, Becky guessed. “You’d end up with so many mittens,” Becky said. “You can imagine. All 11 were at home at the same time. You could end up with 44 pairs of mittens.”

But a new mitten problem has reared its head. Seems that Dal is now missing a really warm pair of mittens. Becky figures one of those kids home from college for the holidays returned to school with α warm pair of mittens?

That’s something to look forward to. I guess the Mitten Wars never end.