Today I am going to do a repost of a writing I did in a blog I used to keep awhile back. Just a little more insight into me. The picture of the rocker is the one I mention in this post.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Richness
I’ve been replaying memories in my head again of late. Thinking back hard on those growing up years, the early ones. It was apparent we were poor but at the same time there was always something to do so one really didn’t feel it all that strongly unless it was those horrible schoolyard comparisons that seemed to be so inevitable. Then I never measured up. At the time it bothered me. Today….not at all. We were a family just trying to survive. Hey, and we made it.
Some of the ways we had to go about making it weren’t things you went to talking about with others. It was just another way of drawing the lines of comparisons. But I do remember my parents receiving "commodities". I remember the cheese, peanut butter and karo syrup the most. The last two came in containers that looked like paint cans. The former was a huge block of crumbly cheddar. After the commodities there was a spell with food stamps. Oh how horrid that felt.
When I think back I can actually remember the articles of clothing I owned that were bought new. Otherwise the bulk of what we wore was all hand me downs from relatives and other families. I remember going all through first grade wearing boys dress shoes because that is what we had and they fit. Christmas was when we received new items of needed items. There would usually be one toy per kid to round off the Santa experience. Show-n-tell after Christmas break was always brutal. I’d see all these amazing toys that other kids got and would be scolded from the teacher for not bringing in my show-n-tell. I would take having her think I was just a forgetful child instead of telling her there really wasn’t anything to show. I never owned a Barbie, slinky, etch-a-sketch, magic 8 ball or any of those much sought after items of the time. It did kind of make me an outcast come play time. Maybe that is why I went so heavily into sports and tom-boy ways.
We heated with oil in the house in the earlier years and that particular house was drafty. Winters in northern Wisconsin can be brutal. The oil was used sparingly. I remember the winds picking up so bad you could see the linoleum lift up a bit on the floors because of the draft. During particularly harsh cold snaps my parents would heap atop our blankets in bed, all the winter coats and have we kids all in one bed to keep us warm at night.
Mom used to take in ironing. Weird to think someone could make extra coin doing that isn’t it? She had a few ladies from town who worked outside the home and had no time for ironing. So they would bring multiple baskets that she would pain stakingly make crisp and perfect. She tended to clothes we could only dream we owned. Our own laundry was always line dried because we didn’t own a dryer. Mom used to make sure to buy the laundry soap that had the free items in the box. I can’t remember the name of the brand, it was something like Oxydol or Duz. But the promotions would run items such as dishes, glasses or towels. We managed to acquire those items this way. Otherwise we were big users of jelly jars and such for our drinking glasses.
We had a HUGE garden every summer. I remember many hours out there weeding the thing. Dad had an OCD about weeds. He never even liked there to be foot tracks between the rows once the weeding was complete. The dirt was raked so perfect it looked like dark velvet. Come harvest time mom spent many hours canning up the goods so we would have the larder full to brimming for winter. We knew two families who had dairy cows and my folks bought raw milk from them cheap or would do a chore trade for it.
We ate well. No, we did not have any of those fun foods everyone else had such as the newly introduced convenience foods that were starting to make their way on store shelves, but mom was a good cook and made filling meals. Healthy? No. But filling. I especially liked baking day. Lots of cookies and breads and oh my did I love it when she made doughnuts. Our dinners were many soups and casseroles and made up, thrown together items that became favorite comfort foods. We used to even have butter and milk macaroni that was then fried up crunchy in butter. Sounds weird but it was good. That was an end of the month kind of meal when the pickin’s were getting slim before the next paycheck. Boxed cereals? Only as a rare treat. Otherwise it was oatmeal, cream of wheat or corn meal mush. I still like those items today.
We didn’t make much garbage back in those days. Everything, even packaging, found multiple uses. And we had a cobbler in town so even when dads shoes were wearing thin on the soles he would bring them in for fresh soles. Old man Ness. I remember his shop well and I loved the smell of it.
My folks didn’t own a car until I was probably close to 10 years old. Dad’s job was even within walking distance of home. Mom tells of how when I was born they had to borrow a car so she could get to the hospital in the middle of a snow storm. I’ve always liked my entrances to be memorable. LOL Mom never has had a drivers license.
We never took a family vacation. We would play in the snow in the winter and walk to the lake to swim in the summer. We would get the occasional treat of a cone at the local A&W and we visited with family who lived nearby. We had a book mobile that came to town and I used to devour that. And we just had the blessing of growing up in the prettiest country God placed down on earth. Lakes, rivers and streams were many and so many woods a body could easily step into them and within 5 minutes of walking not hear anything but nature. I had my collections that gave me pleasure in the looking at of them. Things like marbles so pure and true in their color they shined like jewels. Empty spools from thread, the kinds that were wood instead of todays plastic. They always sparked my imagination enough to create things from them. I made a whole family once with those and some scraps of yarn and fabrics. I had an empty ink bottle I had dug up out of the yard. Who knows how old it was. For me it came from a magical time. There was my worry stone. A beautiful round piece of sandstone I used to rub my thumb across when I was fretting about something and used it so often that it had a scoop to it from the rubbing. I had beads and trinkets found along the way. I really loved that old cigar box.
We had a television that got three channels on a clear day. Sometimes it took some aluminum foil around the rabbit ears and some tricky arranging of them there ears to get the channel in and if that didn’t quite get it sometimes the trick of turning the dial to the in between spot of the channels clinched it. Not a lot of time was spent at the tv.
I think back on all this and now I smile. Oh those conditions could have contributed to the anger often felt in the house at the time but I give my parents credit for raising four kids through it. Dad had a fourth grade education and was illiterate and mom got as far as eighth grade. Except for the ironing mom never worked outside the home. And dad had held two different jobs in all the time I knew him. He didn’t make much but it got us through.
As the years went by "things" started coming into the home. By then I was nearly out of the house and that dreaded beast the credit card came into being. When dad passed away he only left behind debt. Even his house went back to the bank. We divided up a few items from the house. I took a set of china we kids had bought my parents for their 25th wedding anniversary that my eldest daughter now has. And I took an old run down rocker that had belonged to my great-aunt that no one wanted. A few years ago Bob and Perry took that run down rocker and gave it a face lift. In fixing and restaining it Bob found the original tag on it. It was made in Superior Wisconsin in 1903. You should see how beautiful that chair is now. I consider it one of my treasures.
I feel bad for what my parents went through in the hardships but I am grateful and thankful to and for them also. Many of those experiences have shaped the kind of person I am today. It also prepared me for further hardships I would live in trying to raise my own kids in similar conditions of want. I have learned to not make the want my focus but instead the blessings that God pours out every day. I helped teach my kids about laughter. For all my shortcomings I know I gave them that gift. With that, bad times don’t have to be so bad and our poverty will only be in the possessions not of the soul. And, with that I plan on not leaving this planet in debt to creditors. I do plan on investing in my relationships.
Financially we are good. Great? No…but we settle for good just fine thank you. I think largely that is because we remember when. And we now have a sense of why. Not yesterdays whys…but todays and how that effects our tomorrows. That is not a bad place to be.
"Live simply so others may simply live"~Gandhi
