A Grandchild of the Depression

I am still coming to grips with the death of my toaster. My sister-in-law gave us the toaster as a wedding present over thirty years ago. Deep inside me, a voice insists that a decent person would need only one toaster in a lifetime. If I had cleaned old bread crumbs out of it daily and taken it in for routine check- ups, the toaster would still be alive and well, burning toast in my kitchen. Trashing that toaster suggests a lack of character and a degree of moral depravity in me that I am loath to face. I am a grandchild of the depression.


While eating strained peas in my highchair, my depression-raised parents imprinted the idea in my little brain that possessions should never wear out if you take proper care of them. An iron, a living room couch, and a crock pot, are lifetime investments. Just like a piece of real estate at the lake, they should never wear out. If they do well…. there is no stronger evidence of low character than an appliance that checks out before I do.

As a grandchild of the depression, I was thirty before I was spendthrift enough to purchase a store-bought dress. It took all my resolve to do it. I was squandering money on a department store dress when I knew I could make a dress that looked half as good for 1/3 the cost . My guilt didn’t quite kill me, but it was a month before I could shake the feeling that I needed to confess this dark deed to my ecclesiastical authority.

When I first married I unwillingly inherited many of my parents’ possessions that fell into their category “too good to be thrown away.” These possessions had burned out electronic tubes of enormous proportions, were full of rust, or had dinosaur scales from the Cretaceous period. I knew if I kept this junk around my home would look like a cross between a landfill and what is left in the wake of a killer tornado. Since I didn’t want hate mail from Goodwill, I couldn’t take the stuff there. And I felt a little an evil corporation that goes to the woods, clear cuts a thousand acres and leaves the timber to rot on the ground if I hauled these mill stones to the dump.

Fortunately, the man of the family utterly tuned out my Depression Era parents’ scruples. No advice about how he had an obligation to fix a swing set my parents bought in 1964 swayed him. He just wanted the pile of rust gone. And he handled the forthcoming inquisition about what he did with the junk with aplomb. A Saturday morning, a pickup truck, and he made short work of any junk my parents couldn’t handle throwing away. No wonder I like this guy.