I
grew up in a farming community outside of Phoenix, AZ. I don’t know
how poor we were; I mean I don’t know if were poor or not. My mother
was fabulous at budgeting
money and my dad always worked extra. Probably like most kids, there
were some who had more money than us and some who had less. I recall
that among my particular group of friends we never counted how much
money we had in our pockets in order to be friends
with each other. Our family ate our share of beans and I thought
everyone did. Maybe they did; I don’t really know. But that being said
I’m recalling how both of my parents would act and react to money.
My
mother was frugal. She enjoyed good things in life but she never spent
money she didn’t have. For most of my growing up years she was a
housewife and considered it
her job to take care of the house and household finances. She hated
being in debt. She still does. She owns everything she has and has no
debt. Admirable, for sure. She taught us that pursuing finer things in
life isn’t a matter of money, that it is a
matter of deciding what you want for yourself and going after it. And
maybe it’s using your time wisely to pursue good things and not having
time for the trashy stuff. Mom loves poetry; Robert Burns is a
favorite. If you have any experience reading Burns
in the original dialect you know it is challenging. Mom thinks the
challenge is worth it to gain an understanding of the author’s meaning.
She loves good music and would gather her kids around the old
phonograph player and play the early (50’s) versions
of the Time Life compilations. There was everything from Turkey in the
Straw to Tchaikovsky. She liked Country music so we heard that too.
But thank heaven she liked Marty Robbins and not Tex Ritter.
Dad
was an easy going, hard working carefree individual. He worked hard so
that he and his family could enjoy the good things. We never had a new
car but we always had
a good car. We bought good shoes so they would last but we didn’t buy
shoes often. Dad raised cattle so we could have meat. He had grown up
having to milk cows and hated it, so thankfully his kids didn’t have to
do that, but we learned to work in other
ways. Dad always had money in his pocket so that when we were in town
we could stop at the Dairy Queen for a cone. We could get whatever we
wanted for $.25. I guess that in a nutshell I’d say about my dad that
if he had money, everyone had money; he shared
what he had with everybody.
But
Mom and Dad talked some, not much, because they weren’t whiners, about
growing up as Depression era kids. Dad in particular would talk about
him being the youngest
of 11 kids and how his mother would bake 4 loaves of bread every day.
On a wood stove mind you. She was always preparing a meal, cooking a
meal or cleaning up after a meal. Dad talked about there always being
plenty to eat but that it was usually not fancy.
One of the things he remembered was having dried biscuits or maybe some
leftover bread, especially the hard crusty ends in milk. Mom learned
to make a great pot of beans because that’s what they had. While I was
growing up the word “beans” meant pinto beans.
If you had green beans you said green beans. If you had Lima beans you
said Lima beans. But if you said beans it meant pinto beans. I’ve
spent years trying to make beans the way Mom does. So later in his
life, while I was growing up, my dad would save
biscuits for a couple of days, let them get good and dry and put them
in milk and consider it a special treat. One of Mom’s comfort foods was
beans. Nothing fancy in them; maybe a bit of bacon or a ham hock, but
mostly just a few spices and beans.
So
for breakfast this morning I had some biscuits in milk and thought of
my dad. Comfort food. Good thoughts, remembering him sitting at the
kitchen table eating biscuits
and milk. My dear sister still has that table and I think I need to
visit her and have some biscuits and milk. Mom lives with my sister now
and maybe I can get her to give me one more lesson on making beans. I
make some pretty darn good chili beans, people
have asked for my secret. But I want some “beans”, beans the way my
mom makes them. And now I wonder what my lovely daughters will think of
as comfort food when they are my age. I hope they have good thoughts,
the way I have good thoughts.
