Hand Me Downs

     There was a time when life was simpler, when people did not look down on you for being frugal because being frugal was an ordinary way of life, even those who were well to do were frugal because they remembered where they came from. There was a fine line between being poor and being frugal. I think we grew up being frugal but it wasn't always like that, there was a time when I think we may have been on the back side of that fine line but mostly we were just frugal. We always had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and clothes on our backs, but that didn't stop us from pinching pennies, stretching the dollar or tightening the belt on occasion. It is the clothes on our backs that brings to mind this story.
     I am the oldest of five kids, not only was I the oldest I was the tallest. I would say I was the biggest ( weight wise ) but we were all skinny and didn't start putting on weight until our late twenties or early thirties. With five kids Mom seemed to always be looking for ways to keep the cost down, in addition to making many of our clothes she came up with ways to get the most out of all of our clothes. This is where being the oldest and biggest was an asset, when it came to clothing I was usually lucky enough to get new clothes, my brother Pat was fifteen months younger than me and we usually got the same things at the same time but Sis and my other two brothers got "hand- me- downs". Little sister Vickie and little brother Ronnie sometimes got their "hand-me-downs" from cousins or friendly neighbors.
     I don't know when the term "hand-me-downs" first came into play but I do remember hearing it often when I was growing up. It generally was a reference to used articles of clothing that were passed along to someone else after the original owner outgrew them. Pants, shirts, jackets, skirts, blouses and shoes would be passed along to the younger kids as a way to save money. Socks usually were beyond repair and thank goodness there was an unspoken rule about underwear, seems Moms everywhere were really concerned about the probability of their kids showing up at a hospital emergency room in less than clean underwear.
     To make the clothes last, mothers went to great lengths to keep them in good condition ready for the next kid. In the 1950's "Blue Jeans" were the pants of choice for young boys, they were very durable and easy to repair. The first thing Mom's would do is buy the jeans too long knowing that boys would often grow several inches in height over a short period of time. To compensate for the extra length the pants leg would be folded up at the bottom to form a cuff, the height of the cuff would depend on the growth spurts of the boy, cuffs were as little as two inches high or as much as six inches.
     Then there was the issue of wear and tear, we boys were and still are hard on clothes, rips or thin worn spots, mostly in the area of the knee, were quite common. The rips were usually taken care of with a needle and thread but the spots where the material was worn so thin that a hole was created required repairing with a patch similar to a patch for flat tires. My mom had a supply of patches made from pieces of jeans that could no longer be repaired, a piece of material from an old worn out pair of jeans was cut to size and sewn over the worn spot, then someone invented something called the "iron on patch" was available as a quick easy fix, it was a piece of dungaree material embedded with a glue activated with heat.
     Being able to tell the difference between the oldest and youngest of the family was easy, if the kid was wearing jeans without patches he was the oldest, with patches he was one of the younger kids. Another way to tell was to look for wear on the collars and cuffs of shirts, some articles of clothing had a tendency to fade after having been washed a few dozen or more times and then there were the  missing or mismatched buttons.
     Our parents grew up in hard times, during the depression money was hard to come by and no resource was squandered. Whatever the cause or reason "hand-me-downs" were a common sight everywhere you looked. Some kids wore their "hand-me downs" with disdain while others wore them with pride, as for me it was times like these that being the oldest was pretty nifty.
     Every now and then I was the recipient of "hand-me-downs", Mom did make me a jacket out of Dad's navy dress blues uniform, I didn't wear it for long seems that at sixteen I was bigger than Dad when he was twenty. One of my first jobs was in a jewelry store  as a salesman, I needed another suit and didn't have the funds for one, Dad had me come by the house one night, he went to his closet and came out with a suit and pair of shoes that belonged to my Grandfather who had passed away some ten or twelve years earlier. The suit was in style some thirty or forty years earlier, I probably looked like the proverbial country bumpkin but out of necessity and respect I wore the suit until I could afford a new one.
     Hand-me-down clothes were not the only things that were passed along from one family member to another. Often fathers passed down tools of their trade to sons who would follow in their footsteps, mothers passed down favorite recipes to their daughters, family heirlooms were handed down from generation to generation. Cars, property even businesses were passed from one family member to another.
     Often it is a keepsake, some memento of a loved one who is no longer with us that reminds us of who we are and where we came from, these little trinkets from another time and place hold us to a past filled with memories and or knowledge of those we knew and loved or those we want to know about. Handing down  a keepsake belonging to an ancestor often carries with it a story that in essence can keep that persons spirit alive.
     I think my legacy is the stories I write, a form of "hand-me-downs" I am passing along about a lifetime of memories about people, places and a way of life that once existed to a future generation that just may wonder where they came from.