I missed my keyboard Friday, but we felt we needed to drive to Lisbon to visit my mother in the hospital. When a member of the family falls ill everything else gets set aside. I've been thinking about blogging regarding a recent article in our daily paper titled "Americans Turning Toward Thriftiness." The first line of the article stated that frugality is making a comeback and that Americans are showing an enthusiasm for thriftiness not seen in decades. As we drove back home I thought that my mother and dad and Mary's mother and dad plus many more in their generation wrote a big chapter in that book.
My thought turns to a popular style of jeans where the knee, sometimes part of their rear end, shows through a rip or frayed spot usually manufactured to be that way. While we were growing up we earned the look the hard way. Small bales of hay required our walking along and throwing them onto a rack. Most of us used our thighs and knees to give the bale an extra boost, especially when the load grew higher. New pants hardly ever took their place. My mother and many others patched them, and when that patch wore through, they sewed another over that spot. A basket full of holey socks always waited on her attention, and an old light bulb sat in there, too, which she inserted to give some body to the sock as she sewed with needle and thread.
The article talked about people staying home more and cooking their own meals. We never did go out to eat a meal. Physical work on a farm dictated a large breakfast, an even larger dinner of meat and potatoes, and leftovers added to and prepped for supper. Cows were milked for fresh cream and milk, chickens were kept for fresh eggs and meat, garden fruits and vegetables were preserved for winter eating, and on and on.
This Christmas season will probably wash out some marginal businesses because of people tightening up. In the long run, though, it doesn't bother me because I think this trend towards thriftiness is good for the country as a whole. I probably won't do much different since I've always been thrifty. I had good teachers.
