Feb 13, 2024 4 min read

By Nick Jacobs

While waiting to swallow a pill-sized camera for a 21st-century medical procedure recently, I was scrolling through my phone and found a great quote, but back to that in a minute.

The movie I remembered while waiting was the 1966 movie “The Fantastic Voyage.” It starred Raquel Welch, and had a submarine crew shrunk to microscopic size so it could venture into the body of an injured scientist to fix it, but today’s pill adventure is another story.

​Anyway, the quote I saw referred to family life on one salary in the 1950s and 1960s; “I remember getting a pre-ripped piece of Doublemint gum from my mom that tasted like perfume and purse dirt.”

That perfectly summed up the experience of living frugally on Dad’s salary.

​We had five outfits that we mixed and matched during the school week, play jeans that were patched on top of their patches, socks that had been darned by my grandmother to repair the holes, and one dress-up outfit that we wore every Sunday to church. The only expendable clothing I can remember were my black, high-top, canvas Keds, which were worthless by September.

​At the end lower of the lot, Pennsylvania Dutch for the backyard, Dad had built a fireplace that had originally been intended to be an outdoor barbecue station, but it was too far a walk with all the necessary equipment like tables, chairs, paper plates, and the like. So, we had a little, round, stand-up, three-legged barbecue that held enough charcoal to cook hot dogs and hamburgers. Consequently, the backyard brick fireplace became the burning center for discarded paper products.

​Beside the fireplace, Dad dug holes that were about 3-feet deep and the width of the shovel. The fireplaces and garbage holes became my allowance destinations. You see, after dinner, all of the table scraps and cooking leftovers like potato and onion peels were placed in a little round aluminum pan. I would walk the 40 yards or so down the steep hill to bury the garbage in those compost holes and burn the trash. My salary was a nickel, or roughly 50 cents in today’s dollars. A week’s salary would buy me two orange Nehi sodas and five pretzel sticks and penny candy at Aunt Mildred’s store that week.

​Our milk was delivered by a milkman every other day or so. Our coffee came from the Jewel Tea man, and my mom’s lipstick and rouge came from home visits by the Avon lady. We had one television, one radio, and a coal furnace that Dad fired himself morning and night. Our used car ran on recapped tires, with chains attached by hand during the winter and the cheapest oil and gas we could find.

​The four times we went on vacation, whatever meal we had the night before was carefully converted to sandwiches and wrapped in aluminum foil which, like tea bags, was used more than once. Those sandwiches, along with a container of Lemon Blennd, some cold baked beans, and potato salad were our driving lunch on our way to Cook Forest, Washington D.C., Niagara Falls, and Atlantic City. Those were our only four vacations.

​Moms wore housedresses like June Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver,” but no pearl necklaces. Grandmas dressed like old Studa Bubbas, and, like nuns and schoolteachers, they wore high black, orthopedic shoes. My only living grandfather wore work clothes and smelled like pipe tobacco from his corn cob pipe, and on Sundays he and Dad both wore their suits and smelled like Old Spice.

​Without hesitation, I can say we never ate at a restaurant until I was a teenager, and our big pleasure was ending up at a Dairy Queen on a Sunday drive with my grandparents. Because we had bench seats, six people could fit in one car. We cycled and recycled, saved, and watched our spending, but it was all good.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.