City Girl, Country Girl

Entering the building for the first time, I tripped, dropping the pencil case I had fashioned from a watercolor paint box. Clearly an inauspicious start to fifth grade, my hopes to be as popular at the new school as I was unpopular at the last were dashed, along with my No. 2 pencils.

The fixer-upper we bought when I was a
kid. It looks like it could stand to be fixed
up again.Courtesy: Google Maps.

My parents chose the school for its status as the cheapest private school in the area. We drove from city, through suburb, to country to get there. We planned to build a house, but when our home sold too quickly, we purchased a fixer-upper in a hurry--a house chosen for its money-making potential rather than its excellent public school system.

Shy in social situations, I found making friends difficult. So I sat on the step at recess, secretly annoyed that they recited the jump-roping chant wrong, yet longing for an invitation to join in.

Manure, just right for pelting your
friend. Courtesy: Newsvine.com

Johnna took initiative, and I accepted an invite to her dairy farm. Mortified by her proposal of a manure fight, I declined to participate. Only as an adult, scooping manure to fertilize our garden--and paying fifty cents per bucket for the privilege--did I realize she wasn't referring to fresh manure, but rather, the composted variety--clumped grass bits bound with what looks like dirt.

The following Monday, Johnna reported the social faux pas. My city ways didn't pass muster. Ostracized for refusing to sling cow dung, years later, my dad put it into perspective: While teaching, he heard of a kid, taunted, because his firefighter dad perished in a blaze. I won't repeat the wording, lest it haunt you as it has me. As I recall my first year at the new school, I shed no tears. But I weep inside for a boy, who, in his moment of greatest need, experienced cruelty rather than compassion.

My fifth grade teacher (I could inject "bless his heart" here, but won't) took me out of class one day, a few weeks into the school year. The aide admonished my classmates to include me while the teacher assured me that Lisa would be my recess playmate. She was--for a few days. Walking back into the classroom following the 'be-nice-to-Laura' lecture remains my life's most humiliating moment. That the teachers were trying to help provided little salve for my embarrassment. I chose to homeschool, partially, because of my experience.

Our back yard.

For years, I replayed this in my mind. As an adult, I live just a few blocks from the Raymond Avenue house where I resided while attending the country school. I love my neighborhood, and hope never to leave. We have an extra half lot, cultivating more garden than grass. When people ask, their eyes glaze over before I'm half-done reciting all the herbs, vegetables, and fruit we grow. We pickle, dehydrate, can, freeze, brew vinegar and beer, make wine from our own grapes, cook everything from scratch, compost, forage, and--aside from being poultry-free--run what might be considered an urban homestead. We buy raw milk, farm-fresh eggs and local honey. I keep meaning to learn soap- and cheese-making.

Recently I googled Johnna. She runs an online store, like I do. She's a homesteader. She teaches classes on making cheese and soap, and foraging wild herbs. She homeschools.

Oh, my. She could be my friend.

Here's Johnna. Doggonit, I even owned
the same dress. Courtesy: Publicradio.org.

Here I am, picking blueberries.

If only I had more initiative, I'd pick up the phone. Maybe it's not too late to have that manure fight.

But I know myself too well. I still bear the social reticence that kept me a fifth grade outsider. So I'll pick up my No. 2 pencil instead, and write how I now realize perhaps Johnna and I are more alike than different. The city girl can befriend the country girl.

Children grow up, and time turns manure into soil.

Next up: An unlikely piece of '80s nostalgia brings back more memories than you can imagine: A Tinful of Memories

Tweet

A Tinful of Memories

Courtesy: Brady's Bunch

Lunch hour found me selling candy to my middle school classmates. With most of them living out in the country, they had reason to envy my proximity to a candy shop, Alger Variety Five & Dime. I could turn a box of Lemon Heads for 15 cents that I had purchased for 10, or a Tangy Taffy for 40 that I had purchase for a quarter.

When I first shopped Big Lots, on a trip visiting my aunt and uncle in Illinois, though, a whole new world of wholesale pricing opened to me. Large bags of candy for mind-bogglingly low prices enticed me to buy a cartload, which I stored in a suitcase under my bed--my own little candy store warehouse. Eventually, the killjoy school principal shut down my enterprise, more concerned with parental complaints, cavities, or classroom distraction--I never figured out which--than impressed by my entrepreneurialism. I reopened once he retired.

My last Lip Lickers Lip Balm tin, which I
thought about selling at Laura's Last Ditch,
though, ultimately, I changed my mind.

At Big Lots, Lip Lickers Lip Balm, on clearance for ten cents each, presented a bargain I couldn't ignore, tempting me to branch out beyond sugary sweets. I bought three cases of Lip Lickers: strawberry, cherry, and watermelon. These, too, I sold to the kids. Going to a small school with seventeen classmates, of which only six were girls, I quickly glutted the market.

I'm a lip balm addict, though, and used the overstock myself. When I finished the second-to-last container nearly a quarter century after purchasing it, I posted the empty tin on eBay. I learned ages ago that people buy the strangest things. I didn't think it would sell for much, but since my 1980s Trapper Keeper fetched a pretty penny, there was only one path to certainty. Multiple bidders pushed the price in excess of $20. Gloating to my friend, Pam, she gushed that she had some, too, complete with contents.

Pam composed an evocative eBay description, celebrating the ubiquitous lip balm's softening to a pleasant consistency when stored in a back pocket, its fruity aroma greeting the nose while the satisfying click of the sliding lid tickled the ears. For her, it was pure nostalgia--nostalgia that she could part with, though, for a price. Hers, with a condition far superior to mine, topped $100 in an all-out bidding war. It might've reached $150, but I can't recall with certainty. I wish I could ask her.

I remember meeting Pam. Socializing in groups of women intimidates me, yet I steeled myself to try the moms' group at my church. While I liked the people there, Pam stood out: we shared an interest in selling online, she was fun, not too straight-laced, and I felt I could be my unedited self around her. When you're as unusual as I am, that says a lot. I enjoyed seeing a friendly, welcoming face at church, someone with whom I could exchange more than pleasantries.

Pam loved the tale of the lip balm tin. To this day, when I first meet someone who knew her, I'm greeted with, "So you're the one who sold the lip balm!" She's been gone nearly a year and a half, having succumbed to cancer, yet she's still breaking the ice, posthumously.

My friend, Pam.

When I think of middle school, I recall my desktop candy and lip balm shop, but mostly I remember not fitting in. When I think of the lip balm, though, it fails to evoke feelings of youthful rejection. Instead I think of Pam, and the feeling of welcome. The sliding lid isn't the only thing that clicked--we did. I regret that we didn't get to know each other better, sooner, outside of church. She deserved to be more than a compartmentalized friend.

It's my nature to sell things. Through the recession, prices on vintage Lip Lickers plummeted, yet I find myself drawn again and again to the lip balm tin, and the temptation of selling it. But a friend is a balm beyond price, so the tin's not for sale, not now. To anyone else it would be just an empty container, but to me, it's full.

It's full of memories.

Next up: Ridiculed for my frugality, I've concluded, Blessed are the Thrifty.
Tweet

"Army" Buddies

Secondhand shops swap newness for variety. Finding it an advantageous trade, I rarely step inside a "normal" store. I prefer the beautiful and the ugly, the vintage and the modern, the useful and the obsolete, all vying for shelf space; pans like Grandma used for family dinners; hats like Dad wore, and toys GenX-ers remember from childhood. To fully appreciate the thrift store atmosphere, I'll shop with a friend--preferably one possessing a hair-trigger sense of humor.

My friend, Tammy.

For me, that friend is Tammy.

As we browse, instead of turning to fisticuffs over the same prime merchandise, our division of labor has me taking the kitchenwares for Laura's Last Ditch, Tammy the hair styling tools for What Once Was Lost. Combining business with pleasure, we pause frequently to draw attention to our most chucklesome discoveries. Loud guffaws from the Grand Rapids Salvation Army's aisles may well mean we're shopping.

My autistic son often shops with us. With "Look at this!" our refrain, he, who utters more echolalia than useful speech, proffers arbitrary finds, mimicking the "Look at this!" he's heard so often from the two of us. When it's a plastic ice cube tray rather than a toy, I am amused, a veteran mom no longer nonplussed by his horrific deficit of meaningful communication.

I sold Bridge to Mars in my shop.
Tammy convinced me to buy it. It sold
for $40 within a couple of weeks.

Some thrift store merchandise shares a similar dichotomy of horrific yet amusing: a bare-kneed ceramic nativity shepherd, created by an amateur wanting in skill; a shark in a jar of formaldehyde; a black velvet UFO painting I feel compelled to purchase. When I shop solo and find a tacky gem, I mourn the opportunity to share with Tammy my perverse joy. Regardless, I laugh aloud, semi-consciously hoping a nearby shopper will join my merriment--though no one ever does.

Just after Christmas 2010, I find a peculiar framed photo of a boar-like creature, an attached brass plaque boasting "Javelina Club Founding Member, 1986." My prolonged gaze weighs the laughs it might receive at next year's white elephant gift exchange against its $4.99 price and a year's storage. I replace it on its hook. Tammy goads me that I "need" it, but I refuse to listen.

A javelina. Courtesy: Wes Swaincott's Short Stories

Weeks pass, yet I cannot banish the Javelina Club wall hanging from my mind. I resolve to set my usual tightwaddery aside and spring the $4.99, confident I will rescue Javelina Club from humiliating Salvation-Army-reject status. When Tammy and I return, we approach the back wall of our favorite shopping destination we lovingly refer to as "The Army," ready to laugh anew, then consummate the purchase of what will surely be next Christmas's most outlandish gem. But, it's gone. Bereft of my prize, we leave the store. My good friend shares my disappointment.

Tammy warned me I'd regret not buying it. Nearly a year later, I still, like a fisherman, consider this the one that got away.

Friends come and go. With my outspokenness, hard-to-suppress bossiness, eccentricity, and social anxiety, crowned with a phobia that makes placing a phone call an occasion for angst, I marvel that I have friends at all; indeed, I have scared off or neglected many throughout my life. So I especially appreciate Tammy, who, accepting of my many quirks and foibles, has taken the bait.

And I hope not to let this one get away.


"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
― Elbert Hubbard
Tweet

The Outed Tightwad

The local Quality Inn has a great apple tree for my apple crisp.

I've come out of the closet--the tightwad closet. I'm not afraid to tell those who visit my home that they've set their cup of coffee on an end table from a school Dumpster, refinished by hubby, or that the apple crisp I'm serving came from the fruit of the local Quality Inn apple tree. While some look askance when I share a tightwad tidbit, polite people feign interest.
 
But then there are the times when the angels sing, and a friendship is born over mutual frugality. My sister went to dinner at the home of a couple from their church--a couple they did not know well. Conversation was a bit stilted until my sister noticed the 10-10- long distance discount access code sticker on their phone and thought to mention Freeway, a now-defunct service that allowed two minutes of free long-distance for each short advertisement you'd listen to before making a call. The rest of the evening went more quickly, with an exchange of tightwad tips, and discussion of saving money for impending adoptions both families were planning.

Our local museum is free on Mondays.

Even if you don't score a lifelong friend, when you're not afraid to mention something frugal, people will know you're interested, and they'll tell you if a new thrift store opened up near them, if a relative shops at a food salvage store--perhaps even one you didn't yet know about, a neighbor has a beautiful easy chair in the trash, or that the public museum is free on Mondays. Regardless of the exact information, it does flow when people know you want to save money. Voilà! You're a magnet for money-saving knowledge.

The Grand Rapids Press featured me on the front page of the Food section.

A couple of years ago, The Grand Rapids Press wrote a profile in the food section about the money-saving ways I feed my family. My husband, not seeing any benefit to the intrusion, stayed on the sidelines during the interview. There was a benefit, however: friends. Like-minded people I knew only by face introduced themselves, and it progressed from there. Now I have a fruit foraging buddy, which is so much more fun than doing it solo.

In a society where self-worth can be wrapped up in status, sometimes it feels just a little uncomfortable to let people know that I Dumpster-dive or that my favorite sweater, rather than being from Macy's, is indeed from a garage sale. But the reward comes when the little tidbit I dare to share develops into a friendship so tight that I'll even admit to reusing my dental floss. Now that kind of friendship is a real friendship.

If you enjoyed this post, I'd love for you to comment and follow my blog.  Tweet