BY ADELINE MINNICH
A familiar refrain caught my ear. The commercial lyrics coming from my radio paraphrased a melody from my childhood:
�Pack up your troubles in your old Glad Bag, And smile, smile, smile.�
I hummed along, my memory triggered by the old favorite popular during and after World War I. However Glad Bags are a far cry from Kit Bags.
In 1918, my mama had no need for Glad Bags. She had no garbage can, no garbage man, no disposal and no trash compactor. Mama managed to have very little rubbish. There was a wastebasket under the sink. As papers accumulated, Papa would take them out and burn them on a blackened ashy spot in the vacant lot next door.
We lived in the northern Ohio steel mill town of Lorain. Newspapers and magazines were never burned. They were saved and bundled neatly and separately for the twice yearly ragman who clopped around in his horse drawn cart. He bought all Mama�s accumulated papers and rags. My brother Donald and I scoured the neighborhood when the ragman was due because we got a mighty welcome few coins from him for all the metal junk we could collect. He weighed everything on hand scales but Mama had one, too, and if she thought he might be short-changing us, she�d drag her scales out to straighten the matter out.
Table scraps were fed to Papa�s chickens. Wax paper wrappings were smoothed out, folded carefully, and stowed in a kitchen drawer to be used to wrap Papa�s sandwiches in. There were no bottles or glass jars that were not washed and reused for jam, jelly, catsup or chili sauce which Mama put up every summer. Eggs were sold to folks downtown who were not so lucky as we were to have our own fresh-from-the-hen fruit. I cannot remember too many tin cans, since we ate home canned fruit and vegetables. Once in awhile, we had a tin of salmon or tuna fish, but I can�t figure out what use Mama made of these cans, but you can be sure, she used them for something.
She wasted nothing. Her most frequently intoned warnings to me were: �Waste not; want not. Willful waste makes woeful want.�
We were raised frugally. My brother and I had to clean our plates at every meal. We were told that it would insure us of a long life and sunny day for tomorrow. I hated fat meat and would try to hide pieces of fat off my pork chop under my knife and fork, but Papa would eagle-eye my plate, push aside my cover up, and say sternly, �Clean it up, young lady.�
As for all those big brown supermarket bags that pile up in our kitchens today since they�re far too good to be thrown away, well, they didn�t exist during those days at all. We shopped often, running to the store for Mama to buy fresh meat for supper and maybe a pound of sugar. These items were wrapped �brown paper packages tied up in string� and were carried home without benefit of a big double strength bag.
Mama saved each piece of string, winding it into a fat ball. It was mighty handy for sewing up roasting chickens or for flying kites which my brother made every spring from newspaper and flour and water paste.
We didn�t have wrappings from bread or rolls or vegetables or fruit as a bread man came around every day, clanging his bell to alert Mama to run out to the street and pick out some goodies from his heavenly-smelling wares. The milkman�s horse clip-clopped along early every day and hand delivered our regular order. If Mama was having company and wanted something special like cottage cheese or cream, she left a note for the milkman in the glass bottle.
Fruits and vegetables grew in our own yard and garden for the most part, but a peddler of these necessities came along our street a couple times a week. Mama would buy peaches, pears and cherries from him for those orgies of canning that we were recruited to help with. None of these door-to-door merchants used paper bags, so we had none to dispose of. Large quantities of fruit came in bushel and half bushel baskets which we could return to the seller. We kept the bread in a large tin box with a tight fitting hinged lid. Tea and coffee came to the door, too, sold by the Jewel Tea Company which gave away coupons and premiums.
Mama saved every possible stamp and coupon. I wonder if those ubiquitous so-much-off ones which clutter my purse today wouldn�t drive Mama�s thrifty soul mad! What would she do with our daily heap of junk mail? Wonder if she could find anything to do with a Glad Bag that would make her �smile, smile, smile�?
Back to Hard Times