Things are tight – Pass the bologna and re-use that waxed paper

Coping with today’s struggling economy is nothing new to those of us who grew up Downriver in the late 50s and early 60s.

“Things are tight,” dad used to say, “we gotta’ make ends meet.”

“We have to make every penny count,” mom always said as I followed her up and down the aisles of the National Supermarket.

We ate bologna in all its forms – sliced, chopped and ring – because what it lacked in flavor and nutritional value, it more than made up for in affordability when dad was working on-call at Peter P. Ellis Trucking and three nights a week at Montgomery Ward.

My friends and I learned to recycle before recycling was invented. We re-used the waxed paper and foil that wrapped the sandwiches in our lunch boxes day after day, until the foil was only good for adding to the ball we each kept tucked in our desks at school, and the waxed paper was only good for polishing up the slide on the playground.

Our moms used to mend socks, wash shoe laces and put-up vegetables that they grew in their backyard gardens. Our dads all had very reasonable lawn services – us. And we cut the lawns with push mowers and trimmed them with squeaky clippers that required us to be on our knees and left our hands numb from squeezing the too-big handles with rusty old tension springs.

Decades before “staycations,” we did things close to home when dad would take a week off work in the summer – a night at the Fort George Drive-In, or a day at Bob Lo were big events for us, because mom and dad usually couldn’t afford those kinds of entertainment throughout the year.

Those lessons learned years ago are still good ones. Our family makes an event of $2 movies and trips to the library. My kids re-use their zip-lock sandwich bags and they refill their water bottles a couple of times before recycling them. Me? I still pack my lunch every day, but even though I try to “make every penny count,” and my wife and I try to “make ends meet,” I haven’t once in the past 45 years, ever taken another bite of bologna!

What lessons did you learn growing up Downriver about making ends meet? How did your family cope if things were tight? Has that experience helped you now?