Have you ever witnessed strange habits from your parents or grandparents that seem to be leftovers of another era? WW2, etc.? I've heard of Depression era Americans having strange habits (ie. with using every part of the chicken, etc.) My father grew up with a diet low in meat and fat consumption. For much of his life, getting a chance to eat a piece of beef or a leg of pork was some sort of rare miracle. He spent many years as a prisoner and working skeleton at a Communist forced labor commune during the Cultural Revolution. His cooking, as far as I can remember, has always been horrible and composed mainly of fatty pork, beef, vegetables, and fish drenched in oil.
I don't own a cell phone, blackberry, ipod, etc. I see no need for any of this stuff on a regular basis so I don't have them. Would that count?
My father smoked cigarettes, but refused to buy the kind we see today. He always rolled his own using cigarette papers and loose tobacco. That was the way he learned to smoke as a teenager in the early 1930's, and he saw no reason to waste money on "store-bought" cigarettes. My mother, who was also a teenager during the Depression, hoarded canned food. When she gave up her house, and moved to live with my sister, we had to throw out hundreds of cans of food which had expired dates. My wife says her mother, who was born in Singapore in 1910, was the same way.
My parents were both products of the Depression. They constantly scrimped and saved, always convinced that the next Depression was around the next corner. We had a garage and basement full of scrap parts and pieces. Occasionally these would prove useful but mostly, I think it was just ingrained in them to save everything. I grew up hearing plenty of stories about picking up coal from the railroad tracks and finding cardboard to put in their shoes when the soles had holes in them. I think I picked up some good habits from them, e.g. not be wasteful with food. I wish I had taken some lessons more to heart. I think I am a bit of a packrat because of it all myself, too!
My parents and relatives used to take the thin soap bars and attach them to a new bar so they would get maximum soap usage. I'm sure this was a hold over from the depression. They also saved grease...why? I'm not sure. I do think it was used in some cooking. And I remember my Dad would lay out a trip around town like a planning for D-Day to save time and gas. (I still do that)
Absolutely! I'm a hopeless packrat...I save everything and find it's difficult to throw out anything, useful or not. Drives my wife crazy, and I'm sure it's a habit I picked up from my parents. LOL! My mother taught me to do that, and I still do it!
The leftovers from my Grandparents I still embrace today would include: 1. The art of being frugal with money 2. Appreciating a home cooked meal 3. From my Grandfather,,,,, to love a woman as yourself, and to work hard. 4. The importance of family 5. Praying.... especially now a days A wonderful legacy of traits to pass along to an up and coming generation. Thanks Gram and Gramp, love ya Mark
My Dad grew up in the Depression era as well, he had graduated from high school the year before Pearl Harbor, and he was a "hoarder/pack-rat" of extraordinary dimensions. When he bought our second farm/ranch in 1956, it had one single Quonset hut style building as storage, 35’x60’. By the time I left the farm in the eighties when farming became less than a profitable undertaking, he had three more much larger building full of "stuff". The last one was (at the time) the largest curved steel (Quonset style) building in Montana. It was cement floored, and a full sized NBA court (94’x50’) could have been put inside of it with twenty feet to spare on all four sides. As soon as it was completed, we used it for grain storage, but the following year half of it was full of "stuff" other than grain. It was then that I came up with what I personally called the R.W. corollary as per "things you keep" at any given time. It goes thus; "the amount and numbers of things/stuff you save is directly proportional to the amount of covered space in your control". His own favorite saying was that; "as soon as you throw something away, you will need it or something just like it!" He had (I kid you not), his own Father’s last car 1956 Pontiac Chieftain, his own first two ton truck (1938 Ford) which he bought new in 1939, his last wooden wheeled pick-up (Ford model B), his Father’s convertible horse-drawn surrey (could be pulled by both a single and double set, had not only a fold-down Landau top, but ski sets to attach to all four wheels). There were also the first two self propelled combines he owned from the fifties, and all of the old bakery business hardware he owned. The three stall garage that came with the place had not only three cars in it (Gramp’s Pontiac, Dad’s Cadillac, and Dad’s 1949 CJ2-A, it also contained "stuff" hanging on all three available walls, and the open rafters filled with "stuff". This doesn’t count the three buildings he had at the original place, which were also "filled to the rafters" with "stuff", nor the open storage of "stuff" like two pull type combines just for starters. I ended up with that "don't throw it away" attitude as well. I've got stuff, boxes from old purchases, bolts, screws, nuts, wire, connectors for wires, and tools that I forgot why I bought them. I only have a one-bedroom apartment these days, but I also have a storage shed, and a lock-down storage locker about five miles away. This isn't counting the garages of a couple of friends and their open yards I use for "large" stuff (pickups, cars, ATVs, boats). I'm a pack-rat, no doubt a "hold-over" from my parents and grandparents.
This thread made me think about a gal I met who's mother had grown up in wartime and/or post-war Germany. Obviously that was a time of severe poverty and rationing for most people. I never met her mother, but she told me there was a strict rule in her house while growing up about how many squares of toilet paper you were allowed to use. I think it was 1 square for #1 and ?X for #2 and this was in at least an average income American household in the 1970s or early '80s. I got the impression that it was a very authoritarian home, this among many other fairly arbitrary rules were strictly enforced, even by physical punishment. She was a young woman in her 20s when I met her and had completely cut-off communication with her parents due to all of this. I remember thinking how sad that all was. As an outsider it's easy to see where this all came from, however for this girl growing up was a terror ride, completely counter to everything that was going on around her with her friends and their families.
My Father, who was a young boy during the war, is shorter than the rest of his brothers and sisters, by a LOT! Doctors believe that this is becuase he did not receive as much food as his siblings when he needed it most. Anyway, eggs were such a delicacy then, but now he will eat them every day, once in a while he'll mention how much he likes them, because he never got them as a child.
My Grandmother was a pack-rat which spilled over to just about everyone in my family except me-though I do have some items in storage-but not an unacceptable mess. I hate clutter. Anyway, my Grandmother owned a four-storey house here in an older section of Houston. The bottom half was totally stuffed with things like: Hundreds of boxed pairs of shoes, hundreds of complete clothing outfits, hundreds of artificial plants, hundreds of 1 gallon cans of unused and some partially used cans of paint. And I can't remember what else? Oh yeah, hundreds of cans of vegetables, and Campbells Soup-which we were still consuming several years after she passed away. My Mother, had thousands and thousands of Paperback novels. Boxes and boxes of totally useles paperwork of all-kinds. Two closets full of clothes-most not ever worn or not in many years. My Sister-has a 2-storey house-filled from foundation to rafters and then some. Her mess is at least more organized. The Garage (which is my Brother-in-Laws "Sacred Territory" the rafters in the 2 car garage are stuffed full of boxes of Christmas decorations and old toys my Nephews have not touched in 15 or so years. My Brother in law needed some space for something he bought that he needed to use for his Antique Cars and Jeep he's restoring. There was absolutely no space available-so he figured he could sneak out some of those boxes of Christmas decorations and dispose of them without my Sister finding out. However, he was wrong even though she never said anything about getting rid of those Christmas decorations-she simply went out and bought more than what was disposed with. My Brother-in-Law gave up fighting my Sister for space. My oldest brother is a pack-rat-but is somewhat organized. The Brother im living with is a BIGTIME pack-rat and is dis-organized as hell. The 2 car garage is filled with ship that is nothing but junk and or of other things that will never see the light of day-including four huige airconditioner coils, spare and rotted hot water heaters, three useless crap Stoves, clothes he will never wear again (of which lately because of my disgust with the mess-I have been sneaking out about a half sack=full of that crap in the garbage per week) has clothes, papers, books, cushins, old dishes and silverware, hats, old radio parts, totally useless CB radios, two huge freezers, three old bed-frames that will never see use again, boxes of VHS tapes and DVDs that will never be played again, bits and pieces of lumber and sheet-rock that are falling apart and can never be used again, old engines from cars, lawnmowers and God knows what all else? that will never be used again. His ENTIRE living area is a flippin mess. Me, the only thing I hoard-are cans of soup and militaria. My living space is not even cramped, not fully organized but-not a hopeless mess either. I buy lots of canned soup because besides fruit-because it's my favorite thing to cook and eat here at home.
