Growing Up Poor Made Us Resourceful

GROWING UP POOR MADE US RESOURCEFUL - SMALL IMPROVEMENTS WERE ENORMOUS IN MY EYES - A GOLD BIKE, A CHEAP BALL GLOVE AND A MULTI-COLORED COAT FOR HALF PRICE

I knew our family was poor. All my chums were from families of modest income, most of them a little better off than us. We were a family of three, living in a two bedroom apartment, up on Alice Street, in Bracebridge, back in the 1960's, and my associates all lived in their own homes. They never held this as a social / economic thing because when it came right down to it, while their families owned homes, they didn’t have oodles of money either, or live extravagantly. These blokes had holes in their runners like me, and got wardrobe changes every August before school started. Maybe socks and underwear at Christmas. For hockey sticks we used ones found at the arena, that were usually broken, and we scavenged baseball bats from the garbage bin at Jubilee Park. I bought a new baseball glove from Bamfords’ Variety Store, up on Toronto Street, as a birthday gift from money given to me, and all my chums had hand-me-down gear that had belonged to older brothers and sisters. No one had much money, other than for corner store treats, and we got those funds from hunting down pop bottle empties and cashing them in for black balls and chewing gum.

My parents, Merle and Ed were good providers but their wages weren’t enough to escape the renter’s way of life. We had to settle for paying off someone else’s mortgage, someone else’s trip to Texas every winter. We just couldn’t seem to get ahead. We weren’t any different then than millions of other folks, who by circumstance, just couldn’t elevate much beyond cheque to cheque living. But I was good with what we had, and even at Christmas, I was contented with a new hockey stick, a couple of pucks, some mitts and a game board. Merle always apologized for not being able to afford more things for me, but I seldom if ever asked. I contented myself by playing outdoors, and used every resource available, for day to day entertainment.

I know that the social stigma of being broke bothered my parents way more than it did me. I remember in high school, being able to afford a neat multi-colored, mod-style fabric coat. I think it was twenty bucks. We used the order office of both Eatons and Sears a lot. I imagined myself looking very dapper in this new coat. Funny how I didn’t notice others wearing the same style of coat before I sent in the order. It was like we all belonged to some club, and should have had an emblem or patch on the front that identified us as “The Boys of Knute” or something like that. It seems a lot of folks were bargain hunting that spring, and it showed. When I told my wife this story, she smiled and said, “you mean the coat of so many colors?” “Are you telling me you remember that coat after all these years? We weren’t even dating then?” I asked. “When we came on the bus, we’d often pass you walking to school.....and there was no mistaking your nearly florescent jacket. Everybody on the bus knew it was you.” Great. Nothing like history to improve your lagging self image.

My mother was very proud and didn’t like to admit we were always a hair’s breadth away from financial disaster, at just about every moment. It affected her health and she suffered from high blood pressure from her early forties. Ed was a difficult guy to live with, and he liked to imbibe, and although a million miles from the story of Angela’s Ashes, he had, in his youth, lived very much a tragic life with an alcoholic Irish father, who abandoned four kids and a wife. Ed would quit his job in a heartbeat, if a manager got too cocky, but he always bounced back, and usually made it to a managerial position within several months. With a good knowledge of the lumber industry, he’d quickly show his prowess with customers, on the respective sales desks of a number of regional lumber companies. He was excellent at this job. But the wages were still low and even with both my parents working, it just wasn’t enough to....let’s say, put down enough to get a mortgage, let alone a cottage, which Ed’s bosses all had. We all had inner struggles with jealousy. It would be stupid to deny this. For example, I was jealous of my friends who all had neat bikes. I went for a long time without, and when they decided to go biking, I stood and watched their silhouettes disappear over the horizon. When one of the lads got a new bike for his birthday, he offered me his old one for five dollars. I had enough to swing the deal but it took breaking into my Christmas fund for a selfish, self-serving purpose. So I bought the most rickety, spokeless, wobbly, rusted piece of junk you’d ever seen. When my dad saw it he was moved to action. He took me immediately to the hardware store for spray paint.....no kid of his was going to be seen on a bike that looked so bad. I picked out gold paint and let me tell you, it didn’t do anything to improve the looks of the two wheeler. In fact, like my multi colored coat I told you about, the old bike just stood out more, and even seemed to glow when nightfall arrived. At least I got to keep up with my chums. Well, not keep up as much as tag along, which was fine. It was better to wobble in last place than remain behind.

Eventually my dad couldn’t stand to see this golden wreck beneath his proud son. So he gave Merle ten bucks to invest, on my behalf, as a downpayment on a nifty green bike, with a banana seat, from Ecclestones Hardware, on Manitoba Street. The bike was thirty-five dollars, and Butch Ecclestone, a dear man if ever there was one, let me take it home then and there, as long as I promised to come in every week with a small payment. It was a bumper season that year for lawn mowing, up at the Alice Street apartment, so the bike was paid off before the end of that summer. It was a metallic green and a joy to ride. I could not only keep up with my buddies but pass them. The only problem was, and it always seemed to be a color related issue with me, but during our neighborhood devilry, all the neighbors could identify me.....to my parents or the fuzz, as “you know, the kid with that snot-green bike!” I bet the shipping tag on that new bike didn’t identify it as being “snot green.” I wouldn’t have bought it then. So I apparently have always been identifiable by the color I attach to myself.

I loved living up at the Alice Street apartments because we were all in the same boat financially, and I’m pretty sure it was discussed, during those summer evening vigils out on the lawn, escaping the terrible humidity trapped in the apartments. But no one seemed to feel downtrodden,..... just living day to day without abundant resources. If you bought a new lawn chair you were living on the wild side. Two lawn chairs and you were getting ready to move on from Alice Street. There was a comradery in that apartment complex, and a sharing of what resources were most bountiful. Food and condiment sharing was a vigorous trade, and you seldom got through a dinner without someone poking their head in the kitchen door, begging a cup of milk, flour, sugar or a container of mustard. We gave what we had. We knew that whoever we loaned the items to, would be there for us, when we needed groceries but were cash restrained. I didn’t see anything wrong with this kind of financial modesty. We helped one another. When one car didn’t start in the morning, there was always a partnering in the very next vehicle that did start. I had a dozen parents in that building. Merle and Ed could ask neighbors if they’d seen me recently, and although the questions might have had to ricochet around the complex, someone as sure as pumpkin makes pie, knew where to find me ninety percent of the time. And yes it helped having a glow in the dark, gold bike, then a snot-green one, and later, a multi-colored coat......the only one in our neighborhood.

By all definition we were poor then. I knew it but for some reason, I found strength in being resourceful as a result of being poor. I had more patches on my pants and shoes than original fabric. The souls of my shoes used to flap in a strange, almost musical cadence, that simply eliminated having dry feet on wet days, or sneaking up on my friends....or enemies. When they couldn’t be held any longer by glue or tape, and I’d be suffering obvious skinned knees from the frequent falls, Merle would insist on getting me a new pair. Not PF Flyers but whatever shoe was on sale at Stedmans or the Economy Store. It didn’t matter to me. I held no stock in flashy shoes but I certainly liked ones that kept my feet dry. I used to run a lot so the not-tripping thing was pretty good as well.

I can remember at baseball, some of the kids, and even the coach, laughing at my cheap ball glove. I knew it was cheaply made every time I caught a ball. It had thin layer of leather and some felt I think under that, and a fabric covering. But basically it was my skin and bones stopping the fastball. The fastball was smaller than the softball most of the younger teams played with. Some of our players could really move that ball along, and all I could do was grimace and turn the frown upside down. As the coach would have liked me to admit, even the pop-ups into the outfield, hurt like hell, if I didn’t catch them in the small webbing of the tiny mitt. It was all I had and my parents couldn’t afford anything better. I think I did feel disadvantaged about this situation, yet I made some incredible catches with that corner store purchase. I got so used to it, that even when I got extra money, I felt it would be unlucky to abandon an old and very worn-out accessory. I probably used that glove into my late teens, and everybody took a shot at making fun of it. Then I’d make a diving catch and they’d be absolutely spellbound how I could have hung onto the ball with such a poor quality glove.

I did the same in hockey, with woefully inadequate equipment. I couldn’t afford goalie skates until my Midget years. Truth is, until it was ruled illegal, I used my baseball glove, with a special protective sleeve taped on, for a couple of seasons. The league didn’t have a lot of surplus equipment to loan out, and I had to settle for what no one else wanted. The pads for my legs were terribly thin and for years I played without arm pads. Until that is, I came home after one game with huge bruises on my arms from slapshots I’d stopped. I didn’t get a lot of rebounds off flesh and bone, I’ll tell you....just a searing pain and tears in the eye. I wanted to play so badly that I was glad to compromise. After nearly breaking my toes, on each foot, the coach finally insisted that I had to have proper goalie skates for insurance purposes. In my pre-juvenile year I was able to buy all new goalie equipment from money I’d made at a summer job.

It’s funny now when I think back on those days. It’s not that we’re wealthy today but infinitely better off than Merle and Ed were in the 1960's, living up there on Alice Street. As young parents ourselves, Suzanne and I did have some painfully lean years trying to afford a new house, a broken car, debt to the eyeballs, and raising two young lads. And we raised the boys with a keen understanding of what being resourceful is all about. Suzanne, who originally trained as a home economics teacher, which later became “family studies,” could make up a soup or stew from just about anything, and kept us well fed through some pretty tough economic times. The boys are still pretty resourceful running their vintage music business, here in Gravenhurst. I can’t tell you how many old guitars, they got cheaply, were fixed up and passed onto young folks and old, who wanted “something affordable.” I know where they were coming from. Settling for less isn’t so bad, even if it’s a wobbly gold bike, a ball glove with a capable hand within, and a multi-colored bargain coat that kept me warm and dry regardless.

I may have been poor but it never stopped me from enjoying each and every day.