By todays standards we might have been considered low income or even poor, we were a family of seven living on one income in the 1950's but we kids had no idea of our financial status and we really didn't care. We had food on the table, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs and we have good memories of those times.
Being the oldest boy on either side of the cousins there was no one to hand their used clothes down to me so I got the new jeans, shoes and shirts. Being the tallest of the family my clothes were handed down to brother Pat if they were still in serviceable condition.
Here now is the theme of this story with the key words being "serviceable condition". Unlike todays kids who seem to get everything their little hearts desire, back in the fifties folks were a little more thrifty and had millions of ways to extend the life of just about anything, in this case clothing.
Kids, especially boys are hard on clothes, what they don't outgrow they rip, tear, poke, and generally wear thin any material known to man or mothers. My mom was a master at repairing jeans. She started out by buying them extra long, back then you could buy jeans about six inches longer than you would ever need. There are many pictures of me in new jeans with a 4 - 5 inch cuff, as it turns out deep cuffs were a fashion statement and then again they were havens for for mud, dirt, leaves anything that might be looking for a home.
Then comes wear and tear issues. These are issues that occur normally in a day of a boys life as we are always in some sort of scuffle, crawling into some place we should not have been or it was just a matter of accidents happen. Usually it was the legs that incurred the most damage especially the knees. The knees got ripped, torn and worn thin before any other part other than the seat, but mom had a fix for that too. At first the fix involved a needle and thread but it was not long lasting but then mom found the "iron on" patch which came in various sizes and was suitable for adjusting to smaller sizes with a pair of scissors. It was really easy, just cut a piece to overlap the offending area then heat up the iron and slide it across the patch, the attached glue would bind the two pieces together and add at least another season to the jeans. Some of the more inventive moms would even put a matching patch on the other leg just for appearance sake.
Shoes were the next big thing that kids tore up or outgrew on a regular basis. I think it is a well know fact that a kids feet grow at the same rate and possibly faster than the rest of their body, either out or up. In our case it didn't matter as mom's dad was a manager for General Shoe (cowboy boot division), at least twice a year we would go to their house and grandpa would bring out a grocery bag of boots that he just turned up in the floor, whatever fit was ours. I think I was about 15 before I bought my first pair of shoes.
It would have been nice to have grandpa around when Danny was a young boy, Linda looked up one day and saw that a brand new pair of tennis shoes had the toe worn out on both shoes. Turns out Danny had a skateboard that he would get down on one knee to ride, the only means to stop it were to drag his feet.
The other thing was that mom was a master with a needle and thread, she was always sewing shirts for us boys and dresses for sister Vicky, one year the whole family matched at Christmas. Another time I needed a new jacket for school so she pulled out dad's Navy dress blues uniform which I wore for Halloween (it was a tight fit and I was about 15) afterwards she turned the "blouse" into a jacket for me, unfortunately it was only good for one year then I outgrew it.
Money may have been tight for us, I don't know, we often ran around in old clothes that had patches or hand me downs from a neighbor who had older kids but so did a lot of other kids. You have to understand that our parents grew up in the "Great Depression", they learned to make do with what they had. A lot of parents today want their kids to have the things they never had so they shower them with the latest toys, games, clothes, cars what ever their little hearts desire and that is never a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment