I didn’t know until recently just how frugal my grandfather was. I never felt or noticed he was that way. But when I was born, he was married to a woman I regarded as my grandmother. She took good care of us and bought us nice things when we visited. In my grandfather’s defense, he grew up extremely poor.
Still, I’m surprised to learn of his reluctance to “waste money on little luxuries” when my mother was young.
My mom and I were talking about birthdays, and she said “I don’t think people thought that much about birthdays when I was a kid. At least me and Jack never had a birthday party. I think Aunt Anna made cakes for birthdays, but she made a cake every Sunday. My grandfather used to kill a chicken every Sunday. Aunt Anna cleaned it, cooked it and because the oven was hot, she made a cake. Not a fancy cake – just a one pan one. I tried to make a cake when I was about ten. There was a cookbook in the house – my mother’s. I looked through it and thought I can do this. I got all the ingredients, mixed them up, and popped it in the oven, and the oven wasn’t hot enough, so it didn’t bake. It was awful.”
I said, “That’s not your fault. The oven was no good.”
“No”, she protested, “We had a great oven.”
“Well why wasn’t it hot enough?” I asked.
“You had to use a lot of coal, and get it just right.” she said, “It was hard work. That’s why Anna baked a cake every Sunday. Since the oven was hot enough to cook a chicken, she didn’t want to waste the amount of coal and effort she put into it. My father never baked a cake. He baked bread – concrete. You know, I told you about it before.”
“Well, at least you had family close by. You could go next door and get cake from Aunt Anna on Sundays.” I replied.
She said, “Yes, she always gave me and Jack a little piece. Also, early on Sunday mornings, Jack and I would run down to Aunt Agnes’s. They got a paper delivered and she let us read the comics.”
“The funny papes.” I said, using my grandfather’s vernacular. I understood why he didn’t get the paper. He couldn’t read English.
She added, “Aunt Agnes had a phone too. There were a couple of people I gave her number to in case they wanted to call me. If I got a phone call, I’d run down there. My friends always waited.”
“How did you know there was a phone call for you a block away?” I asked. “She had kids. One of them would run over and tell me. We didn’t have a phone because my father didn’t have anyone to call. You know lots of people didn’t have phones back then. Because if you wanted to talk to your neighbor, you just yelled over to them.” she said. “When Alice married my father, she bought a phone and a refrigerator.” she continued.
“You didn’t have a refrigerator? What did you have, an icebox?” I asked.
She replied, “Yes, we had an icebox but no ice.”
“What?!” no ice?” I was shocked.
“My father wouldn’t buy ice. We put food in there but none of it was cold. I think Jack stored a couple of his comic books in there.” she replied.
“Oh, so it was a cabinet.” I said, and then asked, “He didn’t even buy ice in the summer?”
“No, but in the winter, if we had anything we wanted to keep cold, like jello, we put it in the living room. The living room had French doors and we could close it off. It was as cold in there as it was outside. I’m sometimes surprised we survived.” she said, laughing.