The Depression

Although I did not live through the depression, its influence was strong in the home where I grew up. My Mom sewed all the dresses I wore to church. The first time I remember having a store bought dress was an Easter dress purchased for me at the old McDonalds store downtown when I was thirteen. It was a pink, button down dress. I’m sure I looked hideous in it since pink has never been my color.

When sewing, Mom saved the scraps of material from sewing and stashed them in a plastic sack in the closet. Although, most of the material wasn’t the kind of material you can make quilts out of and my mother didn’t quilt anyway. It’s hard to believe now, but quilting was a lost art in the 1960’s and 70’s. Not wanting to waste, Mom cut buttons, which we never used, off old shirts. She strung the buttons together as a set and put them in a button box. If we ever used a button out of that box, it’s news to me. But it was a good lesson in using my noggin to find ways to conserve.

Dad had his own idiosyncrasies from the Depression. He bought canned rhubarb on sale and stockpiled them in the pantry. This choice of foot storage item here is interesting since we had a rhubarb plant in the backyard and years would go by before my Mom would make a rhubarb pie. Dad bought canned oysters occasionally. He would heat up milk on the stove and drop in the canned oysters and serve it with oyster crackers. He called it oyster stew. I’m sorry to say it was AWFUL.

After I left home, I dropped by the house one day, to find Dad repairing an iron tool that had broken. He was using my Mom’s vacuum cleaner as a bellows to get his “forge” hot enough to bend the iron. This event sticks out in my memory since my Dad just loved to buy tools. I don’t ever remember him fixing a tool before this incident. Although, he never threw anything away either. Unfortunately, organization was not his strong suit. He would misplace tools he bought and then find it easier to go out and buy another tool rather than find the misplaced one.

Mom was of an entirely different cut. If she bought something once, it was never to be lost, and if the family was taking appropriate care of the item, it should never, ever break. I mean never. Anything breaking around our place was a testament to what a pack of wasteful, white trash we were.

My parent’s generation was the generation that was forced to march off to war and face the armies of Hitler and Japan. I have wondered if their tough experiences in the Depression prepared them for the war.