SATURDAY SHOPPING...

I remember when .... Saturday was grocery shopping day. Dad took Mom to Kroger (she didn't drive in those days) for food supplies and they were usually home not much after noon. That meant no hot lunch. [The kids wouldn't mind anyway - we didn't eat hot lunches offered at Taft Elementary on school days. Too pricey? We carried peanut butter or bologna instead.] Guess Saturday lunch was often sandwiches from fresh "light bread" then. I also remember opening pork & beans and eating them cold (or room temperature). No weenies, just beanies. I still like them that way best. Sometimes we had Vienna sausages or potted meat - which were a treat since little processed meat, other than bologna was on the storing list. We never felt slighted or poor, though. Mom's Sunday dinner always made up for the different Saturday menu. Especially her pies.

Wayne recalls that his mom went grocery shopping once a month (when the check came from the mines). She'd get a Greyhound bus down to Clendenin and the store keeper would use his truck to deliver her and the groceries back up the road (about five miles to Queen Shoals) at the close of business that day. Once a month necessities for a family with seven children was a pretty good load, I reckon. Nothin' fancy - dry beans, flour, sugar, other staples, but there was usually a bag of candy (whatever would stretch out most, like those little orange marshmallow peanuts) as a treat. Doubt that stretched more than one day with seven youngsters.

I went shopping today - all the way to Barboursville. My friend Steph and I met for a nice breakfast and she did the driving from there. At Hobby Lobby, I headed straight for the fabric aisles and likely spent much more than our folks would spend for necessities, though my yardages were not large. Well, for some of us fabric IS a necessity. I had a little baggie with slips of cloth to be matched - all UFO's (unfinished objects in quilters' terms); mostly something to go with squares already sewn and lacking sashing and/or binding - that sort of thing. Found some good deals and some great matches.... and amazingly came home with three pieces of RED. One pattern just wouldn't suit when there are three different shades of red in three separate projects.

Try explaining that to a husband who had to get his own Saturday lunch. I figure it was red ... so Grandma Oe would understand.

[Actually, DH said not a word about my purchases, sweetheart that he is. But it makes a good story.]