posted
Dec 4, 2008 by Lamar Thames
Not wishing ill on anyone who has lost a job or is facing uncertain times, there may be an upside to the economic turmoil we are facing. Sort of getting back to basics, if you will.
With unemployment rising and a topsy-turvy stock market, a lot of us are being forced to change our outlook on gift giving for the Christmas season. An article in the Times-Union recently quoted some families who were cutting back on their spending this holiday season. That may not be a bad thing.
I look at a 14-year-old I know who has an Ipod, cell phone, television in his room and access to a home computer. Not bad for the son of a single parent who has to work as a waitress. His father, who was out of work for nearly a year until recently, also supports him. Still, the boy has clothes, shoes, food and a roof over his head and is considering opening a savings account with the money he got from relatives for his birthday. I asked him if there is something he needs as a Christmas present and he said he couldn’t think of anything. Not bad at all.
I contrast that with my grandparents on my father’s side, who lived in a house outside of Geneva, Ala., that never had running water or indoor plumbing. To my cousins and I who visited that meant we only had to take a bath once a week and we could go pee in the woods. (The outhouse was a different story, especially if you had to go at night.) I loved to use the hand pump to get water from the well out back. Our grandmother called us “smart young boys” for being willing to pump the water. I always liked it when she called us smart. Some of my cousins who lived nearby and got to do it all the time didn’t think it was such a cool idea, though.
Looking back on it, my grandparents were very poor but I didn’t know it at the time. They raised cows, pigs and chickens and grew corn, peas, beans and other crops, so there was always good food to eat. An afternoon snack was usually one of my grandmother’s cold biscuits, sprinkled with sugar and taken from the old “safe,” a storage cabinet with a screen on it. My father rescued what was left of the crumbling safe when both his parents died. He always intended to rebuild it. He never did and I kept for a long time after he died, intending to do the same. I never did either.
Entertainment was usually some gospel program on the radio at night, or sitting around telling stories. The biggest downside to their lifestyle, to me, was trying to keep both your front side and back side warm by the old potbellied stove in the winter.
I am not suggesting we return to those days but certainly we can learn to live with a little less. Maybe, too, we could use less greed, not just from us common folks, but also from the corporate CEOs and the politicians who vote themselves raises or otherwise enhance their status at the public’s expense.
Faced with the prospect of little or on income, most of us would take less to keep doing what we were doing as long as we thought the higher-ups were doing the same. I am not naïve enough to think that the old days were better. I just wish we could get to a point where modern days are the best they can be. Our only hope is for each of us to strive to be the best that we can be.
I am going to try to do my part, will you do yours? (The photo accompanying this article is of Lamar Thames’ grandparents Andrew and Josie Colive Smith Thames.)
Lillian Brown
12/4/2008
11:01 am
#56
Oh Lamar:
Your reflections take me back to those good old days and yes I agree we have to go back not to living poor but to the days of living rich in family love and heritage.
Have a Merry Christmas.
Joe Thames
12/4/2008
12:33 pm
#57
Nicely said pop! It does seem sometimes that needlessly it’s getting harder to find an appraoch and a way of life in these modern times. However, change is necessary for the 13 year old with his iPod and computer becuase his generation and the one after will not be able to imagine a life not directly linked to these technology. Just as I could never imagine living in a house without running water. The difference is that his generation will need a working knowledge of all this technology just to compete on a global level.
Though my generation, gen-X , was not born with computers we took to them rather quickly, and your generation has as well. I mean, who would have thought that in one lifetime a man could go from pumping his own drinking water at his grandparents home in Alabama to reaching the entire world through is very own website. “Smart Young Man”, indeed!
Dick Guzewich
12/4/2008
12:35 pm
#58
Lamar
Truly a beautifull piece! We show our real character in struggles. My grandparents were similiar. Dick
Mike Matinchek
12/4/2008
12:56 pm
#60
Your article re your AL family brought back quite a few memories. My family had no running water either, except in the 1-room ground floor. We just called it “The Kitchen”. Don’t know what else to call that room. (What DO you call a room that has a sink, a (gas) refrigerator, a coal stove, a sofa, an Indiana cabinet and a kitchen table w/ 4 chairs?)
The sink had only 1 tap . . . hot water came from the bucket of cold water placed on the coal stove. Baths were taken in 20 Gal. galvanized tubs and more than once, the water was shared while it was still warm. (A stretched out bed sheet provided the “privacy”.) When it comes to night time trips to the outhouse during winter, thank God I can only remember that it was cold and not the cold, itself. Eventually, we got a small gas stove but the coal stove remained, as it was still our only “furnace”.
My sophomore year in high school, things really got upgraded. My Dad and Grandfather (can’t bring myself to use lowercase letters when I refer to them) put in a gas water heater, replaced the coal stove with a kerosene “furnace’, and built a bathroom onto the back of the house. They worked during the end of summer and fall and had everything done in time for Christmas. Now THAT was a Christmas to remember!!.
I could add more but I think I’ve already bored you long enough. Armed with this knowledge, though, maybe you can see how easy it was for me to relate to the he lead article of your website and why I liked it so much.
Greg Johnson
12/4/2008
1:17 pm
#61
Lamar,
I enjoyed your column about your grandparents, and the story about the night time visits to the outhouse brought back some memories of my own. Mine were about spiders lurking under the toilet seat in the dark.
Bill Grubbs
12/4/2008
4:37 pm
#63
Hey Lamar…
Agreed, we need to live love and make do. We have
to justify our needs not the wants. I grew up in
North East Al, we did not have electric power until
TVA came along. Keep on writing.
See you in Church,
Bill G
Lana Champion
12/4/2008
8:39 pm
#64
What a great story about “the good ole days.” There’s a lot to be said about the simple life…having dinner as a family..talking instead of texting and soaking up the beauty of our surroundings. It’s so easy to get caught up in the corporate rat race and none of it brings long term happiness.
I miss your column in the Clay Sun, but I sure am glad you are still sharing your stories.
Hope your Christmas tree stays upright this year!
Wendy Hatfield
12/5/2008
10:20 am
#66
I am the mother of that 14-year-old with the various technological gadgets and I have to confess there are two levels of thought always running around in my mind. One is that I am foolishly proud of his material things. It says to me that although we struggle financially, my son does not feel left behind in the world of gadgets. But the other thought warns me of the danger of constantly being connected to an electronic device.
If I tell my children to turn off the TV they go to the XBOX, or the internet. These days you have to specify. “Do not sit in front of anything that is connected to an outlet on the wal.l”
When I wait on people at my job at the Outback and see children who just look up long enough from their portable gaming devices to order their chicken fingers, I just know in my bones that that is not quite right; yet I am have fallen prey to the same kind of technological babysitting. Last year my daughter’s grandma gave us a portable DVD player for the car. A part of me thought it was a nice gift to have and the other part of me thought if I tell the children to stop watching so much television at home and then put a TV in the car what am I saying to them. The DVD player broke a few months later anyway, making the fight easier.
All in al,l even with technology as fascinating as it is, if I had a time machine I would not have a problem deciding where the kids should go: Straight to my dad’s grandmother house to play outside and have a bath in a tub on the porch.
heather sieger
12/5/2008
3:15 pm
#67
That was a great article about the economy and Christmas this year!! Thank you for sharing. Tell Barb to have a wonderful birthday:-)
Heather
Oleane
12/6/2008
7:53 am
#74
wonderful column Lamar. Sure did bring back some memories.
Barbara (Thames) Olm
12/6/2008
6:57 pm
#76
Hey Cuz!! Thanks for the memories. I was the dumb city girl that came to Granny’s house and didn’t understand the “country way”. I was mesmerized by all the “odd” things I experience there.
I remember the time I dumped out all the water by the pump that was there to PRIME the pump to get water out of it! And about that outhouse with the sears catalog…what was that for??! LOL AND being a girl…I didn’t get to pee in the woods…too many boy cousins around! LOL
We are doing a lot these days to cut back and get back to basics. The clothes line is going back up and the kids are going to learn what it’s for. The house is much colder at night with more blankets on the bed. We even have a winter garden…you’d be surprised how many things grow through the winter in our mild climate and I’m waaay up in AL!
BTW, do you still have the remains of that old ’safe’? Again, the city girl…that thing facinated me. I’d never seen one and couldn’t figure out why a “cabinet” had a screen door on it. I’ll never forget looking at a jar of peanut butter through that screen!
Thanks for the memories. I wonder what Granny and Granddaddy (what was he called? he died before I was old enough to remember him) would think about being on the ‘net’?