Cindy and I didn’t know we were poor. Andrea, four years older than me and always more observant, figured it out but apparently didn’t tell us. So we happily basked in our ignorance.
With little money coming from Daddy, whiling away his time in Missouri (supposedly putting a bathroom in his parents’ house), Mother hoarded every cent to make ends meet. She sewed our uniforms for school, and showed us how to cut cardboard to plug up holes in the soles of our shoes.She was a pro – having done that herself as a kid.
We went shopping at Atlantic Mills, a super-cheap outlet store in Minneapolis. My Aunt Jeanne, mother’s sister, had told her about it. We could get 29-cent white blouses to go under our school uniforms, and cheap underwear and socks, too.
Food was another problem. But a fairy godfather fixed that.
Mother’s Uncle Ed, who worked for Libby Foods in Minneapolis, was able to get us free cases of food – dented cans that the stores couldn’t sell. (Nobody seemed to think that was dangerous in those days.)
Problem was, the labels had been removed. So we got good at guessing what was inside. We knew from the sound they made when shaken and the shapes of the cans which were fruits and vegetables, and how to spot the occasional can of corned beef hash (taller than the vegetables, skinnier than the fruit). We never once got botulism.
Mother turned dinner into an adventure.
“So, what are we having tonight?” she’d ask as we gathered around, shook and guessed and, when we finally opened cans, saw what had been chosen. Pot luck at its epitome. It might be green beans, peaches and hamburgers. Or corn, pears and – hamburgers again. We ate a lot of hamburgers.
Sometimes, on a Friday night, she’d say: “Should we have a nice dinner tonight or should we just have hamburgers again and go to a movie?”
Well, guess what we always picked. Mother loved movies. She’d worked as an usher in the Maple Lake theater as a teenager and always bragged that she got to see “Gone with the Wind” seventeen times!
But I digress … back to dinner.
No matter how poor we were, though, Sunday dinner was always fried chicken. We could make a chicken last for at least two meals for all of us, maybe more. And hers was the best. Dipped in flour and fried in bacon drippings and butter – well, yum.
One stormy November night, as we were eating a mysterious casserole of leftovers, there was a loud thump that had us all dropping our forks and scrambling out the back door.
The wild autumn wind had blown not only early snow, but also a full-grown ring-necked pheasant, into the side of the house. It was dead. Pitiful, lying there in the accumulating snow. We all crooned, “Poor thing,” gazing sadly upon its broken body.
Then Mother snatched it from the ground, held it up by its limp feet and did a little dance.
“Meat!” she cried, and we girls danced with her, like heathen hunters around a bonfire.
The next night our canned peas and plums were served with roast pheasant, thank you very much.
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