Was the Depression so enjoyable you want it to last forever, Mom?

It’s not the Depression anymore. We have food now. You don’t have to save every tiny dab of leftovers, every sugar and ketchup packet from the coffee shop.

You also don’t have to go trash picking. You don’t have enough room in your house as it is to keep all the useless stuff you pick up. And just because I don’t shop at Pic’n’Save or yard sales doesn’t mean I am trying to be one of the Vanderbilts. You’re not poor; you have a sizable pension and no mortgage anymore. Spend a bit of money on yourself and enjoy life. What are you saving it for? To line your coffin?

It’s the year 2000, Mom. Pantyhose are $5. A dinner out is going to cost at least $5 per person and probably more like $10. You are not going to find a motel room for $10 a night anymore, or if you did, you can be sure it’s a place you are not going to want to stay. You can’t find a nice house in a nice area for $9,000, like you did back in the '40’s, and spending more than that on a home doesn’t mean one has delusions of grandeur. Wake up! We also make way more money than folks did in 1947! We can afford a few things!

Sometimes I think my mom would be way happier if everyone were dirt poor and hungry again. Sheesh.

This reminds me… I visited my parents for Thanksgiving, and apparently they have a subscription to this magazine called The Good Old Days.

Being supremely bored, I flipped through a couple issues. Every single little story in them sounded about the same:

"It was 1937, and my family was so poor that we had nothing to eat except dirt and the occasional worm. We had heard that indoor plumbing was coming to town, and boy were we excited about that!

Eventually, Pa broke down and traded that lot of goats for an old Packard and all seventeen of us kids would pile into that rusty old contraption and off we would go down the dusty road with our brothers and sisters sitting all on top of each other and the car didn’t have no brakes, so Pa used to just ram it into the oak tree out front to stop.

We used to work out in the fields sixteen hours a day and then wash ourselves off in a mud puddle and then come inside and eat worms in the dark. Gosh, those were the Good Old Days!"

Of course, I’m thinking Sure they were.

Of course she’d be happier if you were poor. If you were poor, you’d be living at home, helping to generate more leftovers to be cherished.

My mom saves everything. She washes out plastic bags (like zip-locks, not trash bags) to re-use. This bothers me, but it bothers me more that it wouldn’t bother me if she was doing it to save landfill space. (If you parsed that correctly on the first read, you deserve a cookie.) Over Thanksgiving, I tried to throw away some of the stuff that’s been in her pantry since before I left home (spring 1991). I did not succeed.

Michael Palin: Ahh… Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine,

            ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam: You’re right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who’d a thought thirty years ago we’d all be sittin’

            here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we’d a’ been glad to have the price of a cup

o' tea.

GC: A cup ’ COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a

rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money

doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: ‘E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN’. We used to

live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one

room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the

floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for

fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a

corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin’ in a corridor! Woulda’ been a

palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish

tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting

fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say “house” it was only a hole in the ground covered

by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and

live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty

of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in

a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the

morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down

mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home,

out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in

the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to

work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad

would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we

were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox

at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues.

We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four

hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we

got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night,

half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump

of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill

owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home,

our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves

singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t

believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope…

This is a phenomena I have noticed in most older folk who went thru The Depression. My mom also washes out ziplock bags. My garage is stuffed with saved items. I joke about my dad collecting lawn mowers. He must have over half a dozen. My mother has not been known to throw away a piece of fabric, ever. My dad has shoes that are over 40 years old.

But my dad will give you the shirt off of his back. I cannot count the times I have had to wait while dad helped someone whose car has broken down. Mom helps people who are not well off financially with food and clothing.

I figure when I get to be their age someone will be putting a rant in the pit about our behavior that is irritating that we learned when a child.

The attitudes are just too ingrained at this point, pugluvr; you may never get her to change.

My parents have thankfully loosened up in recent years, but they freely admit that it just doesn’t feel right to spend money on “luxuries” for themselves. I consider it a major victory that the baseline for “luxury” has been jacked up so that dinner out is no longer such a big deal. They still do silly things, though, like get worked up over my sister’s buying a leather sofa because somehow that will “take money away from the baby’s college fund.” :rolleyes:

My grandmother, however, has never gotten over her Depression/WWII bunker approach to personal finances. If she wishes to live that way I can’t hope to change it… but her mis-perception of what things cost and what people’s incomes are nowadays means she is constantly jealous of her children and grandchildren. “Traveling on business again? So much money you must have!” … It’s pretty sad.

pugluvr expounds:

Either your mother has secretly infected you with her opinions, or I’m living in the wrong part of the country!

(By “dinner out” you do mean going someplace where you sit down and someone else brings you actual food, right?)

Akatsukami: I sure do mean somewhere where you sit down and someone brings you your dinner. But even if someone else is paying, she can’t bring herself to eat at a place which charges over $10 for a meal for one person. She thinks it’s indecent. And so, when I take my mom out to dinner, I have to resign myself to McDonald’s or Denny’s. I’d sure like to take her to some good steak and lobster place, but she’d be so flabbergasted about the cost involved (even though I’m paying), that it’s not worth it.

Well I go to a place where they serve us the food while we sit down and it costs us 2 dollars for a meal. Granted their menu involves hotdogs chips and tshirts.

The only thing that really bothers me about this mentality is the pack rat aspect. One of the many things I am dreading about my parents’ ultimate demise is sifting through the vast amount of stuff they are holding onto so that my brother and I can have it “after they are gone.”

My dad was an only child, and when his mother died I swear he did not get rid of a single paper clip she had–it all came back to live in their garage.

Please, please, Mom and Dad–if that Franklin Mint stuff is so valuable, sell it now and enjoy the proceeds. I don’t want the plates, or the model cars, or the spoon collection or the 6 china cabinets full of intensely breakable gewgaws.

When I was a kid my mom and my aunt used to run circles around grandma at Christmas time. Grandma had a bad back so my mom and aunt would go do her shopping for her, only grandma (who is actually quite wealthy) would give them a $5 budget for gifts for each of the grandkids (4 of us total). Mom and Lois decided that they didn’t want us to get crappy gifts for Christmas anymore, so they would go shop for nice things, I’d estimate they kicked in an extra 50-75 bucks per kid, and then take them home and write out mock price tags and receipts to show my grandmother. Sometimes the kids would get drafted into helping with the deception. When we were in high school my sister and I convinced them to stop the farce. Now we get cash. Last year it was $7. My cousins and I find the whole thing vastly amusing. The most fun is writing thank you notes listing all the fabulous things we were able to by with 7 bucks.

My Grandma used to buy me a 6-pack of socks for Christmas. My great-Aunt Helen sends me $2 in every birthday card. It used to be $1, but since I turned 16, she’s been big-pimpin’, spendin’ g’s.

My mom has a similar mentality as well, pugluvr. She saves everything. I donated about four trashbags of clothes to Purple Heart a few months ago, not to mention 5 boxes of books, random junk, stuffed animals, etc. Mom was horrified. She thought I should at least have a yard sale and make a profit.

Funny story: When I was 8, she bought a big, value-size Ovaltine powder-mix tin. It had like 3 pounds of hot chocolate mix. Well, my brother and I hated the taste and never used it. When I was 12, we moved and Mom took the Ovaltine with us. When I was 16 (eight years later!) my step-brother thought it would be funny to sprinkle the powder mix on a pizza we were all enjoying. All of us (including the step-bro) became horribly ill and had food poisening for several days. It was awful! I think that finally convinced her to stop saving perishable food products. But God forbid tunafish or canned carrots are on sale! We’ll be eating them for months.

She didn’t grow up during the Depression (my Grandma was born in 1929), but they were poor. I was poor growing up too, but I never became a spendthrift. Thank God! I have to lie about how much I spend on clothes (I usually shop GAP or Banana Republic) because my Mom will turn red and freak out if I tell her I paid $50 for jeans. If I spend a lot on something (like a beaded black cardigan and satin pants I just bought for Christmas), I tell her I got it vintage and it only cost $20.

Hmmm…my grammas are the opposite. My one grandmother, my mom’s mother spends too much money on me that she cannot afford. I feel so guilty, because she buys me expensive jewelry and sweaters and she really doesn’t have the money to spend.

My other grandparents aren’t doing so badly, although my grandfather keeps bitching about his damn fucking taxes being raised…sigh But, get this: there are 11 grandchildren in our family. We each get FIFTY bucks for Christmas. Sheesh.

My grandma spends the right amount on me, I feel. Being a grandma she must buy me clothes, but Mom keeps her up to date on what I’m wearing, and so I actually really like the sweaters and whatnot she sends me. She also includes as much as $50 US, which in Canadian dollars is enough to pay my rent (OK, not really.)

Lord, Nacho, did you just caused a (I thought) forgotten flashback.
Mama returned from Houston with a secret expensive treasure. It was a tin box of Cocoa. Not just any cocoa, mind you.
It was world class chocolate and cost 4 times what you’d pay for Hershey product. Droste? It had a clog-kid at a dyke on the front of the tin.
Did we ever taste a cup of this world class cocoa?
No.
It remained stashed in a special place for only the finest of special occasions.
For 15 years.
Unopened.

I’ve picked up some habits from my grandparents in this respect.

My dad’s parents did go through the Depression (“no big deal”, says grandpa, “I always had a job.”) and so my grandmother would buy the really heavy duty paper plates and then wash them after use until they were totally skanky. She’d also spend the extra money on the really nice paper towels and, yup, you got it, wash them out and use them over and over and over. She, too, saved every scrap of material but then she was also a quilter and I think she used most of it.

My mom’s parents I think went through it too but they never seemed as “anal” as the others. Grandma has this thing about stockpiling food though. She bought down a can of sweetened condensed milk over Thanksgiving 'cause we were going to make caramels with my mom. When they opened the can, the milk was this brownish-tan color, not the sweet cream color it should be. “Gee, should we use this?”, they pondered. “Are you kidding me?”, I responded. I looked at the label and I swear the can had to be about 10 years old. I asked Grandma when she bought it and she said, “Oh, I don’t think too long ago.” Umm, sure.

LOL! I think at this very moment there’s a box of Droste cocoa sitting in the pantry above my mom’s refrigerator, lo these past 5 years. She got it on sale somewhere and just hasn’t found the right recipe to use it in yet…

My grandma has taken to giving away her possessions as gifts in recent years (fine with me, I don’t want/expect her to spend $$ on gifts for us). But the things we get are items she’s had stashed away in the closet for years, never used. For my birthday this year, she presented me with a gold and white bedspread. My dad remembers when she bought it - just after my sister was born, 39 years ago!

Re: stockpiling food… I once lived next door to a mother and daughter who did this. The daughter (who would be about 55 now) asked me to give her a hand getting a set of shelves into their basement. I couldn’t believe my eyes - there were stacks and stacks of canned food in every conceivable nook and cranny (an area of about 20 x 40 ft.). The new set of shelves was intended for - you guessed it - more food. The kicker is that they continued to shop on a weekly basis, as if the canned goods didn’t exist.

My mother wasn’t a depression baby, tho she did have to count pennies when she was first married and had 3 kids in rapid succession. However, my dad rose thru the ranks at work and has a very nice retirement, and mom had her own business for a number of years. Their house is all paid off, they buy their cars for cash, shop in nicer stores, have a big, new motorhome, and think nothing of dropping $200 on dinner.

But let them call me long distance!!! “Well, this is costing us money, so I’m going to go now.” Costing what - $5?? I just don’t get it.

Which explains why I have yet he hear from them, tho I know my dad had surgery 2 days ago… and I only know that because my sister e-mailed me.
But that’s another rant…

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fillet *
**

Isn’t there some kind of religion that demands that its followers keep like 7 months worth of food stockpiled? Man, I wish my memory was better, not only can’t I remember what religion (Mormons? 7th Day Adventists?) but I can’t remember if it’s 7 months, 7 years, half an hour, or what.

In any case, I’m wondering if the neighbors were of this religion.

These folks were Lutheran (very active in the church nearby), so I don’t think the stockpiling was religion-related.

What I could never figure out was when they were actually going to make use of their food stash. They literally had enough food to feed a family of four for several months. What a waste.