From the Improvement Era, May 1951 –

Money to Spend

By Mary E. Winchell

When my sister Bessie and I were little girls, people did not speak of depressions or recessions. They just said times were hard or that hard times had come again.

Bessie and I knew that times were indeed hard, and that farmers worried for fear they could not pay the taxes or the interest on the mortgage.

No one seemed to know just why times were hard. Some blamed the high tariff that we had just had or the low tariff that we had now. But whatever the government in Washington did, we had other things to contend with. The corn crop had been good, and the hogs had eaten it but were now dying of cholera. The wheat crop was poor. There seemed to be nothing to bring in any money.

But Bessie and I had money. We earned it. We earned it by rubbing cheese for Papa. We worked after school and part of Saturday, and he paid us one cent a day. In vacation we sometimes earned two cents.

Papa had an old cheese press that he hoped would help out with expenses. People said that he made the best cheese anywhere in the country, but prices were so low that cheese often sold for only seven or eight cents a pound, and when he sold it at the stores, he would sometimes receive only groceries for it in exchange.

If anyone going by our place stopped to buy cheese and bought half of a big one or the whole of a small one, called “Young America,” Papa would be paid cash. That was a real event in the family and was a help in paying the farmers who sold milk to us. Once I had a new school reader from such a sale, and another time Papa bought a new Sunday School songbook (thirty-five cents), for he could read music and play the tunes on his flute. That was a very special day for us all.

After school Bessie and I would change our aprons and hurry to the cellar, where down the center lay the cheese on long wide shelves supported by upright timbers. We hoped to get through and have a little time to play before dark. We might have to include our small brother and sister in our play as well as the year-old baby, so that Mamma could get supper, but there were many plays in which they could be included. The baby was a delicate little thing but very pretty with big brown eyes and yellow hair. She loved playing with us.

Rubbing cheese was very particular work, and I learned to do it better than I ever learned to do anything else.

With a small cloth we would rub and rub the cheese, top and sides, until every vestige of white film was removed, and there was nothing left to make mold. Then with a clean cloth dipped in old butter, we would rub the top of the cheese. Next very carefully we lifted the cheese up on its side, supporting it with one arm so that there would be no strain on the cheese cloth casing, while we rubbed the board dry where it had lain. Then turning it over very gently, the bottom was now on top. Another rubbing with the cloth dipped in old butter on top and sides, and that cheese was finished and in no danger of cracks, skippers, dryness, or mold.

I could manage the larger cheeses and, by standing on a chair, could do those on the next row, for I was ten. but Bessie was only seven. She had to stand on a box to reach the bottom row and could only take care of the “Young Americas.”

At the end of the day Papa would pay us each a penny, if he had it. But times were so hard that sometimes he could not spare a penny. When he could not, he would write it down in a little book, and then sometimes when he would be in debt to us a nickel or a dime we would get the amount all at once. He never failed to pay us, and we felt a fine sense of security in that knowledge, even though taxes and interest worried even us.

Nickels and children were seldom together in those days, except perhaps at Christmas or the Fourth of July.

Bessie and I put our money away carefully, for we planned to get something really nice with it. We would not spend it as we went along on candy or trinkets in the College Springs store, two and a half miles away, where we occasionally went. I don’t know whether or not it was hard for Bessie to resist spending her money when she was only seven, for she was a shy child who talked little. I talked a great deal, and my decision may have influenced her.

Finally the day came when we each had seventy-five cents. It was the first money we had ever earned, and we were going to the town of Blanchard, six miles away. We were going with Papa who would try to swell cheese to the storekeeper, and we would spend our money.

We blacked our well-worn shoes with blacking made of soot from the underside of stove lids mixed with soapy water. It did very well when the blacking box was empty. We scrubbed our hands and faces. We put on our best clothes. I talked about what we might buy, and of the wonderful store that I had seen once before. Bessie said nothing, but her eyes were shining, and her hands trembled so that she could hardly button her shoes.

We were ready and stood in the doorway waiting for Papa to drive up in the spring wagon with the cheese in the back, protected from the sun and dust by papers and a canvas cover.

Our small brother and sister looked rather bleak for they were not going anywhere. We gave them a very casual good-bye, for we had had them a long time, but we ran back to kiss the baby. She had been having earache but was all right now. She smiled and waved her hands.

We reached the wonderful store and went in. Papa went to the back to talk to Mr. Bean about cheese, and Bessie and I were free to walk about and admire. This store had so many things in it and so much trade that Mr. Bean had to have someone help him sell things. Mr. Wolfe helped him.

Now Bessie and I knew that there were big cities and great stores and millionaires, but it was hard to realize any place larger than this town with its four hundred people or any man richer than the store owner, with all these fine things in his store.

We knew, too, about great poverty in some places and starvation in others. It was hard to realize that, too. We had cheese and bread and butter and milk and things in our garden to eat, and we each had seventy-five cents held tight in one moist hand.

We began at one end of the glassed-in counter. Bessie stood close to me with one hand holding my skirt, for several people had come into the store, and she did not like to look at so many strangers at once.

Here was candy of several kinds, among them sugar-coated gumdrop balls attached to a long elastic string. Bessie pointed a finger at them, but I shook my head. We were not going to spend our money bit by bit on little things. We looked long at mouth organs, or harps, as we called them, for they made fine music, and Papa could play them.

“We might get them for Christmas,” I said, and we passed them by. They were only ten or fifteen cents anyway. There were several small containers shaped like lanterns, filled with pink perfume. They were really quite hard to resist, but we moved on, and here were autograph albums, each seventy-five cents. We thought of everybody we knew writing in them and that would be fine indeed, but we moved down a foot or two, and here lay breastpins, beautiful to see and just right to fasten our lace collars for Church. These breastpins were white clasped hands with a bit of gold at the wrist. They were each seventy-five cents, and we thought we would choose those, but we had not gone to the end of the counter yet, and so we went on.

And at the end, there before us, lay something we had never even dreamed of. Gone at once was the glamor of the pink perfume in its little lanterns. Gone were the good taste of the gumdrop balls, the music of the harps, the interest in the autograph albums, and the beauty of the breastpins with their clasped hands and bit of gold.

For there lay a white wool, factory-crocheted jacket and hood. The hood had a little ruffle around it, and both hood and jacket were edged with a silk crocheted thread. We both looked at it in wonder and admiration, and both at once thought of the baby at home.

“How much is it?” whispered Bessie.

I looked and looked and at last saw the price. One dollar and fifty cents. And together we had our dollar and fifty cents.

We were so excited and eager for Mr. Wolfe to come and ask us what we wanted, as though our choice might suddenly be spirited away or someone else rush in and get it.

The baby’s old hood had been a faded yellow. Grandma had dyed it red, but the dye had not turned out well, and so one side was darker than the other, and the hood had shrunk in dyeing and was now too small.

Mr. Wolfe was selling shoes to an old woman, but when he was through, he came to the counter.

“Do you want something?” he asked.

We pointed to the jacket and hood.

“Those are too small for either of you,” he said.

“For the baby,” we answered.

“Do you have enough money?”

We held up our money, and he took out the warm and beautiful jacket and hood. Just then Papa came up, and we showed him our purchase.

“Don’t you want to buy something for yourselves?” he asked.

But we said, “No, we want this for the baby.”

Bessie carried the gift in its nice box to the spring wagon. I helped Papa carry out the groceries he had taken in trade for the cheese; a small sack of sugar, one of rice, and some prunes. Not too many, so he must have received a little cash, too. I saw the tip of a sack in his pocket and knew he must have a sack of candy for a surprise treat when we got home.

We climbed in for the long ride home and sat side by side.

“This hood and jacket will be nice and warm for the baby,” said Bessie.

“And it will be pretty to wear to Church,” I said.

We were silent the rest of the way. I was thinking over just how the baby would look in her new things, and how pleased Grandmother would be when we took the baby to church. Bessie was probably thinking the same things. We were not always of one accord, but now, side-by-side, we felt a closeness of family and a deep joy and satisfaction.

How wonderful it was to have money to spend!