Back in the good old days

I was reminded tonight of something about which I hadn't thought for quite a while.

I refer to "the good old days" as the time in the 40s, 50s, and 60s prior to my marriage. Now, I'm not insinuating that after my marriage I entered into the "bad old days", not at all. Just that prior to my marriage when I was in my formative years, shall we say, that was the time of the "good old days." My Runnemede days.

Was leaving Runnemede the beginning of the no longer "good old days?" I don't think so. Just that when I started spending every waking and sleeping hour with my husband, I wasn't looking for good or bad, because I had the comfort of knowing that all our days would be good, even if they weren't. So we were then into the good new days.

Enough babbling.

This evening a friend picked up some scraps of paper that I had left behind, and said, "I was raised in the depression and we didn't throw anything away." I knew that. My mom and dad were survivors of that era, which I suppose could be known as the "bad old days", although I've never heard them referred to as such. And it just brought back that which I was thinking about earlier in the day.

I had been recalling the time when my mom died, and how my sister-in-law, Sue, and I had to clear out her things so my father wouldn't have to do it. We knew she was dying and so we started cleaning, so to speak, before she had gone Home. She was in a room separate from hers and daddy's room, a room that had none of her things in it, because there was a hospital-type bed in there and other paraphernalia associated with a sick person.

So Sue and I could work on removing her clothing, her sewing things, her books, etc., which as I look back on it now, was so gross of us to do with her still in the house. Both Sue and I knew our time to get this mammoth job completed was short, and that's why we worked on this project while mom was still with us. Both of us would have to leave Runnemede and go back to our jobs as soon as the funeral was over. So, as mom slept, we cleaned. When mom waked we stopped what we were doing and did whatever she wanted us to do.

So I know that depression survivors were savers. Mom saved breath mints -- every purse had at least one package of three-year-old breath mints in the bottom. Each purse also contained at least one package of the green Wrigley's chewing gum. She had a comb in each purse. She had a pen and pencil and pad of paper in each purse. She had a handkerchief in each purse.

And, I suppose she had all these supplies in each purse because it made it easier to change purses -- just put your wallet in the purse you were then carrying and you're ready to go.

I know you're wondering how many purses there were -- let me just say, there was LOTS of them. Each purse also had some "mad" money in it. The amount varied from $50 to $100, said amount tucked away in one of the zipper pockets that were common in purses of the 60s and 70s.

Mom saved material. She had baskets of material. I benefited from those baskets when I was sewing dolls clothes, and my own clothing. I just never knew how much material she had. She had balls and balls of yarn. Mom wasn't a knitter or crocheter, but she had lots of yarn. I guess people gave it to her and she just kept it.

We did nothing with her plants -- they were all around the house -- but we didn't know what to do, we couldn't just throw them away (kill them), so we left them and hoped that daddy would water them. Some of them survived for years after her death, others didn't. Dad explained that he was talking to the ones that looked bad, but he wasn't having much success in keeping them alive.

I think it was at the time of my mom's Home going that I got a lot of the old family pictures and it started me on my scrap booking journey -- a journey that stagnated until two years ago, and then blossomed and has taken over my house, like kudzu.