by Pat Sumpter

Created on: February 06, 2008

I don't know if I'm what some people would call an old soul or not, but somehow I understood monetary concerns from the time I was three. My maternal grandmother had sent handmade baby clothes to my mother when she learned Mom was expecting another child. In that collection were white, flannel gowns, which I remember wearing as nighties.

Over the years, Mom slit the bottom of the full length sleeves allowing them to fit over my growing arms, the cuffs ending up above my elbows. I was three years old when we finally gave up on them since I had, by that time, completely outgrown them. I went to bed in the buff, and knew even then as a youngster, not to ask for new nighties because my parents didn't have money for such things.

Winters were cold. Ice on the inside of the windows was not uncommon. We heated our house with a barrel stove in the living room, and the bedrooms were kept closed during the day, then opened an hour or two before bedtime. Our beds felt like ice as we clambered into them, and I remember being cold half the night in the neighbor's cast off drapes that served as bedding.

Mornings consisted of getting up to an even colder house since the fire had gone out at night, dressing in cold clothes, and eating a bowl of cereal. That done, it was a mile and a half walk to school through good weather and bad, carrying a jelly sandwich in a paper bag for lunch, while wearing saddle oxford shoes with cardboard inside since the soles were worn completely through. At the end of the school day, it was another walk home. I remember Mom scrambling to find enough cardboard cereal boxes to keep up with my worn out shoes.

Then came the misfortune of our well caving in. With no money to do anything about it, we carried water from a neighbor's house in a metal pail. In the summer when the irrigation canals ran, we brought water to the house from the ditch at the back of our property for laundry, the latter done by hand with a bucket and scrub board since we didn't have a washing machine. Culinary water was still hauled from the neighbor as that from the ditch wasn't fit for drinking.

I remember people from the Health Department coming to the house. Residents who had moved into the new neighborhood behind our property had complained that we were using ditch water for household purposes. Fortunately, once they realized it was only for laundry and bathing, they left us alone.

Just because we were poor, didn't mean we were stupid. As a matter of fact, if anyone had a good

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