Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Saturday, February 13, 1926

Saturday, February 13, 1926

Saturday is a hard day for me. I always feel as if I must bake and fix extras for Sunday, clean up the house, etc. and generally go down town after Gilbert comes home to keep the babies. Such was the case today and it tired me out. I spent quite a bit of time looking at curtain goods and didn’t get done all I wanted to. Besides I didn’t have any money to spend. With a family this size, one could go down town every week with $10 and not have too much money to spend. It sure would seem heavenly.



(Grandma is back with her diary. I don't know what she did for the five days or so when she didn't write in her diary, I'm just glad she starting writing again. I was running out of other ideas on what to post to "cover" for her.

Aunt Marjorie wrote "Mother was short of money until all her children were raised. I don't know if she felt she had enough money after that. She rarely discussed her private affairs, just as she never allowed us to look in her purse or in the desk drawer where she kept her bank book and bills. After Daddy (Gilbert) died, however, Dale and Dick had regular discussions with Mother about family finances as they helped raise us for several years. On the other hand, she never questioned us about our personal finances, at least me personally."

My impression is that Grandma never had material wealth, and she made use of everything she had, not throwing away any scraps of fabric, glass jars, etc. She also used bread wrappers as stuffing for pillows. When we visited on Sundays, we often had Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti until my Dad decided to take a hibachi grill and steaks to cook, along with salad, and all she had to provide was baked potatoes. I think he was tired of spaghetti!)

5 comments:

  1. Even though she didn't have a lot of money to spend, she was still hard to buy for (gifts). We got so we would buy some high quality steaks for her, since her budget didn't seemm to cover good cuts of meat. What I couldn't understand was her method of cooking it would be to pan fry it. Old habits die hard I guess

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  2. It never occurred to me that someone wouldn't look forward to the weekend. But I can see that it was added work for her.

    As for not writing anything, well I get like that with blogging now and then, I just have periods where I don't feel like it.

    If she thought $10 was a lot of money I wonder how much she actually did have to spend? 100 years later how much can we buy with $10?

    She got me thinking about a whole lot of things in just a few short lines.

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  3. I never remember the Chef-Boy-Ar-De spaghetti, I only remember the steaks on the habachi grill.

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  4. I'm so glad society has trended toward less complicated Sunday meals. More often than not, it's easiest to eat out after Sunday church.

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  5. You are lucky to have these and it's so interesting to read your grandmother's diaries. Thank you for sharing them and I look forward to reading more :-)

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