High Waters in style

The owner of the mexican restuarant is returning home to Mexico for a visit. She hasn't been home for 12 years. Her 85 yo father is ill. She is taking her 20 yo daughter with her. Her daughter has never been to Mexico. She talked of how she wants her daughter to know how she lived as a child so that she appreciates what she has. That got me thinking.

I know that the poor today are different that the poor of my childhood. I was better off that my older siblings. Mom and dad added indoor plumbing the year I was born. She had 13 children before me to bathe in a tub placed on the kitchen floor with a blanket hung for privacy. We still had an outhouse. my sisters told me that the bathroom was for the girls and the boys went outside. I didn't care and if I found a tree before I found the outhouse they both seem to work.

Food was very basic. you know what we are trying to eat now. corn flakes, cheerios, pancakes, beef, chicken, pork. potatoes, green beans, We had our own livestock and large garden so we ate better than most. My mother would say "we don't have much but we have blenty of it. My mother did share what she had with whomever stopped by. Many a time my mother would send me to butcher a chicken so she would have something to take to the poor.

The only time I felt poor was when we got clothes. We would get whatever someone dropped by the farm. and with so many to clothe new items were rarely an option. Once a year my mother would trace our feet on brown paper bags cut them out and off to the store she would go. You would start the year off with paper in the toe of the shoe and end it with you toes sticking out. lol well most did I was a dwaf so I spent the whole year with a newspaper stuck in my shoe and my heels raw from rubbing.

I don't know why but once I did grow and inch my pant would be 3 inches too short. High waters they were called . I hated them. Mom once thought she was doing me a favor by sewing 3 inches more of jean material on the bottom to make them "right" I could not convince her that she had ruined my life. "Mom now people will know I'm poor" I'd rather wear golfer plaid pants than high waters. Mom said I didn't appreciate what I had. There were children that were world that did not have clothes. She just did not understand. I spent years with black truck straps tied from the ends of my bunk bed around my ankles and wrist trying to stretch myself. I would hand in the barn with buckets of dirt tied to my ankles. And when I finially grew now I was forced to dress like a poor child.

Yesterday I bought a pair of $50 shorts that were marked down to $5 at TJ Max. The shorts hit me right below the calf. So at 40 something it's OK to wear high waters. Have you seen the kids with the material sewn to the bottom of their jeans.


Fried egg sandwiches were my favorite for a school lunch. The youngest child would carry the lunch bucket to school. They ate first lunch. When it was my turn I would peal out my egg sandwich that and a school milk were the best. Of course on the rare occations that we talked mom into letting us buy a school lunch (we were elgible for free lunch but my mother said we weren't poor) luck would have it that they would have peanutbutter sandwiches.

I remember the junior high counselor calling me into her office because I was wearing athletic rubber soled cleats to school. She said they weren't appropriate. I told her they were what I was able to get out of the hand me down bag that someone had dropped off at the farm. She said everyone could affort a $5. pair of sneakers. I couldn't face mom to ask for money I didn't think she had so I spent the night sawing off the cleats with a steak knife.

My second trip to the counselor was because I smelled like cow *****. I milked a cow twice a day. morning and night. She told me that students were complaining that I stunk, which I'm sure I did. I didn't try to explain to her that there were still 14 people living in my home and that a bath every morning was not possible. I didn't like wearing shoes anyway but I would run to the barn bare footed then wash my feet in the horse tank on my way back to the house. And I would try to shower in the down spout off the barn when it rained. In the winter I would run to the barn bare footed get the cow in and stick my feet up on her milk bags to warm them up. and then milk and run back to the house. Then I would wash my feet in the basement sink after straining the milk.