Ruth Doan MacDougall

Essays, Journal Entries, Reflections & Short Stories

More Frugalities

July 2 2009

 

When I e-mailed webmaster Marney the “Ruth’s Neighborhood” piece titled “Children of the Great Depression,” in which I confessed I dry paper towels on a rack to reuse, Marney e-mailed back, “Whatever do you mean? About hesitating to mention you wash out paper towels? Doesn’t everybody? Don’t tell me that this is yet another of my eccentricities!” and signed it “Marney, who has 3 nice Viva paper towels drying on a little rack right now.”

After the piece was >published on the site, I heard via e-mails and letters from other friends about other frugalities. Lib Kennedy (cousin of author Elisabeth Ogilvie) is eighty-nine, so she was nine years old when the 1929 stock market crash set off the Great Depression. She wrote, “I can remember my mother turning both the collars and cuffs on my father’s shirts. Thank goodness I never had to do it. Also, did your mother tear a worn bed sheet in half and put the two worn edges as side edges and stitch up the original sides into a center seam? It made the sheet smaller but still usable for another few years. I still have some of them. We couldn’t buy anything new until the old fell apart!”

My mother didn’t do this ingenious trick but she did extend the lives of sheets, in the years before fitted sheets, by only changing one sheet a week on each bed. Penny, my sister, and I would strip the bottom sheet off our beds to wash, tuck the top sheet in as the new bottom sheet, and put a clean sheet on top. This also cut down on laundry.

Gwen Newton, age ninety-five, remembers that her mother tore towels in half and resewed to reuse, though she didn’t do this with sheets.

Sally Smith Barrett, wrote, “My mother always unwrapped bars of soap when she brought them home from the grocery store so they’d dry out and last longer.” It’s a good thing that Barbara, Sally’s mother, saved money with such frugalities, because I must’ve cost the Smith family plenty when Sally and I became best friends in seventh grade and extra food supplies were necessary. Sally and I still laugh over how, when I was at the Smiths’ for supper, Barbara always cooked an extra chicken pie (those frozen individual pies), knowing that I was sure to eat a second, if offered, while smaller-appetite Sally ate one.

Winifred Motherwell wrote, “Our childhood was more characterized by the shortages of the war but the same waste not/want not spirit prevailed. I’m fascinated by the ‘innovative’ tips for saving in the newspapers (where they still exist) and magazines. To me they’re just common sense and general practice, like planning leftovers and using rags for cleaning.”

Yes! Into my mailbox also came the New Hampshire Electric Co-op’s latest newsletter with a headline shouting, “Hang Out and Save!” The subhead announced, “The Humble Clothesline Is Making a Comeback as a Simple Way to Save Energy and Money.” In addition to a list of all the benefits of the brilliant idea of the clothesline, there was a “Line Drying FAQ” sidebar in which people were advised to “snap” clothes when hanging them on the line, to prevent wrinkles, and to use wooden drying racks in winter.

Which gets us back to putting paper towels on a rack to dry and reuse . . .

Since I wrote the “Great Depression” piece, other memories about the children of the Great Depression have occurred to me.

My father did a lot of fishing, so I grew up on trout and smelt and only had what I called “store fish” when we visited my grandparents. (Boning a trout on one’s plate, I learned, is like riding a bicycle. I hadn’t boned and eaten trout in years, but when in 1997 I ordered fish in a little restaurant in Ullapool in Scotland and it appeared whole, I took it apart with precision, astonishing Don who is accustomed to my being less than dexterous at things, i.e., a klutz.)

My father hunted until later in his life when he decided it had become too dangerous with too many hunters in the woods (the ones from Massachusetts being especially terrifying). My mother served “chicken stew,” which Penny and I eventually realized consisted of Peter Rabbit. And then there was Bambi. In our adulthood Penny and I mock-complained to our father about having had to eat too damn much venison in our youth, venison burgers, venison loaves, venison steaks, venison stews. He replied that we made him sound like a far better hunter than he actually was.

Sometimes, however, extravagance is necessary. When the price of avocados went down this winter, I bought one every time I was at the supermarket. When the price went back up, I didn’t, as I usually do, stop buying them. Life is too short at this stage of the game, I decided. I spent the extra fifty cents—but I never can forget that these two quarters are two weeks of my childhood allowance.

© 2009 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved


RDM

Table of Contents

Introduction

Short Story: Boot Saddle,  to Horse and Away!

Travelogue: Girl Scout Trip

Travelogue: The Doan Sisters Go to England

Essay: The Silent Generation

Essay: Introduction to "The Diary Man"

Essay: Writing A Born Maniac

Essay: Legendary Locals

Reflection: Sequel Reader

Reflection: Paul <sigh> Newman

Reflection: More Frugalities

Reflection: A First!

Reflection: More About Ironing

Reflections: Sides to Middle/Barbara Pym

Reflection: Where That Barn Used to Be

Reflection: Work

Milestone: Laughing with Leonard

Reflection: Three-Ring Circus

Reflection: One Minus One—Twice

Reflection: A Correspondence with Elisabeth

Reflection: A Hometown, Real and Fictional

Essay: Introduction to
The Love Affair by Daniel Doan