Fastener to the Queen
--by Ben Henneke

There’s scarcely a man on this property out here in the 36 hundred block North Cincinnati who at some time in his life has not tried to force his big fingers to do small finger work. Always at the service of some woman. Nor is there a woman who has not fretted and kept silent about the male’s ham-handedness.

I have just learned it was not always so!

Hooks and eyes are not spawn of the devil in primordial times but the invention of a man, James Newey of Birmingham, England, in the early 1800s, a latter-day advertisement of his company reveals.

In other words, before the French Revolution, all a husband had to suffer were buttons and eyelets, dreadful as they are. We men of St. Simeon’s have had to suffer hooks and eyes as well as buttons and eyelets.

Ellen has a blouse with a high-rising collar which must be buttoned from the back. Who is back there? Three guesses. How many small eyelets? How many large buttons? Do they correspond? Infrequently, and that only after a profane session. I can no longer make my fingers button my shirt at the throat, but I’m still asked to –

Think of the bravery of every woman in this world who wears such a collar as Ellen: the buttoner has feelings comparable to road rage when trying to accommodate a buttonee. The buttoning hands are so close to the windpipe! The neck is so fragile looking!

I’ve not only controlled myself through the button and eyelet era; I’ve spent time at hooks and eyes. T-I-N-Y hooks and eyes on a daughters' pinafores and shirtwaists from size two on!

To test my self control, those fasteners came at the same time as the white laces holding young ladies’ footwear comfortably in place, while the wearer was learning to use spoon and fork. (She only learned to use a table knife in college.) .

Old Newey claims that “fastenings of fashion have been his trade,” He brags, “If It fastens – Neweys Make It.” He further brags that his company is “Hook & Eye Makers by Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen.” He also makes – though the Queen is silent on the subject – snap fasteners for corsets and suspenders; glove and equipment fasteners; slide fasteners; hair grippers and curlers.

Does he do zippers?

Does he do Velcro?

Those two inventions, zippers and Velcro, have contributed to male sanity and marital calm. When I think of the marriages that could have been saved had Newey invented the zipper rather than the hook and eye! Or Velcro instead of the snap fastener! Oh the deep, deep peace of the Velcro fastener after the hurly-burly of finger fumbling with Newey's products.