I got nothin

I hope the few followers I have enjoy a guest blogger from time to time.  Possibly more to come.

It still floors me that even though I have 10+ years on my last guest blogger, his childhood was far more deprived than mine.  What the heck?  I'm older, I should have far more "My parents were so tight..." stories.  Art and Wilma were teenagers - impressionable ages - during the depression, and yet I got nothing on Mr. Guest Blogger from the Plains.

Even though I can't compete, here are just a few memories that came to me recently...

After using them, my mother ALWAYS rinsed out plastic bags, turned them upside down, and placed them over some part of the kitchen faucet to dry.  I often thought she only ever purchased one box in each size.  Ever.

My aunts and uncles were pretty tight as well.   My cousin always had rather warm milk for his morning cereal because his father would not allow the refrigerator to be opened (wasting energy) to put the milk away until everyone was done eating breakfast.

My parents bought a car once that came with white wall tires.  My father made the dealer turn them so that the white walls faced the underbelly of the car.  White wall tires were too showy.  I know that is not a good example of my parents being frugal, but it does speak to their concern for other farm families that weren't doing so well at the time.

No scrap of fabric EVER went to waste in our house.  Before she married my father, my mother saved her money and bought herself a real mink coat.  She wore it so many years, she literally wore it out.  She took it apart and reassembled the parts that were still good - going from a long coat, to a jacket...  By the time I came along decades later, it was reduced to a stole and hand muff set.   She couldn't leave the scraps alone, so she made a coat for my Chatty Cathy doll.  Those animals did not die in vain.  My mother stretched those pelts as far as the eye could see.

I know there are other things that I can't remember - or maybe I just took them for normal.  Didn't everyone's mother cut their hair, make all their clothes and cook meals with 80% of the ingredients coming from their own farm?