I was born in the real poor part of our state (West Tennessee). We always lived close to my grandparents who kept chickens and furnished us eggs. (We also kept a few chickens, and one of them chased me from the outhouse to the house one day. Embarrassing. I may have already related this tidbit.) They, and my parents, gardened and my mother canned vegetables; my grandparents were getting old when I was born and had always raised and killed hogs when it got cold weather, made sausage, cured hams, kept a cow and had fresh milk and butter. Yeah, we didn’t know anything about credit cards, wouldn’t have mattered if we had because my Daddy hated being in debt in the least. - We didn’t know what “plasic wrap” or “paper napkins or paper towels” were either. I guess I probably knew or guessed that some of the townie kids I went to school with thought I was rude, crude and totally unacceptable, but it wasn’t all that big a deal to me. I guess in retrospect a more “nutritious” diet might have spared me some dental problems I struggle with today, but we just didn’t know how Hostess cupcakes and a dime Coca Cola could possibly be bad for us. I once picked cotton for hours as a child and it only came up to a dime’s worth the day I decided picking cotton wasn’t going to be my forte. Those were the days!
Once, some neighbor kids’ daddies had made them pairs of toy crutches on which they tooled all around the neighborhood. I begged my dad to make me a pair and he told me NO WAY am I going to make you any crutches. YOU ARE NOT crippled and that would not be nice to mock a crippled person that way! - Were you in that bunch by any chance?
Yes - and to this day, I make napkins from cotton scraps, roll hemming them. Great tranquilizer and accomplishes something while watching TV.
I still use the old 'flour sack' towels for dish wipers, hand towels, to make cafe curtains, to clean with...I buy one 6 pack of paper towels a year.
LOL - you picked cotton. Up here, it was potatoes. We kids got out of school 2 weeks in the fall to help pick potatoes. Didn't we love it. Out in the fields instead of in school - and pocket money we earned ourselves! Sweet. Lots of lessons there.
But Big Daddy Gub'mint protected kids right out of that opportunity.