Never Buy New - Mend and Make Do

Going back to 1976 when I got called back to GM from over a year lay off, things were pretty tight financially. My job was buried deep in the bowels of “building eight”. At that time there was a maze of conveyor lines for parts, fixtures, and the assembled cores to ride on. It was a dirty, oily, noisy area. Clothes generally did not fare well when you had to run a “clincher” like I did. My friend Al ran a clincher on the opposite side of the supply line from me. We used to have “contests” to see who could make their clothes last the longest. It got to the point where we were putting patches over patches. This drove our co-workers crazy. Whenever we would get deriding comments on our attire we would just answer back, “Ma always said, never buy new, mend and make do!” That would drive them even crazier. My poor mother hated to sew: nothing could be further from the truth in her case. My dad used to tease about the time he asked her to sew a button on his shirt, and she told him to buy a new shirt!!

I was saddened that one of my Great Aunt Bess’s monogrammed hem stitched sheets finally bit the dust, getting a huge tear. Aunt Bess has been gone from this earth for nearly 50 years now. My mother would never use these sheets because they were too “good”. Well they have been good enough for this boy to use! I could not bring myself to rip this fabric into rags. Instead I was able to salvage enough good material from that old sheet to make up three pillow cases! I was just shy of getting four because the remaining fabric had a couple tiny holes starting….

Sunday I worked some in the yard before the bad weather hit. It was just before daybreak when I loaded up the wheelbarrow with the busted up concrete from my latest project. Over a block and around the corner was a half full open construction dumpster. The hardest part of these projects is getting rid of the debris. The streets were deserted as I made two trips over with the concrete. I don’t need to have the neighbors seeing me wheeling that crap down the street in a wheelbarrow! I don’t need the authorities to see me either. That would be all I’d need, get busted for illegally dumping

Going through old pictures I found this shot of me in a rowboat from 1959. I was seven years old at the time. See I’m a natural at the oars!

I was thinking of how Cornelius “read my beads” a few weeks ago as I was tuning up the Singer treadle sewing machine to stitch the pinned fabric together this morning. It has been quite a while since I’ve used this old machine. It took a lot of oiling and adjusting to get the stitches flat and even. I was chuckling to myself as I hemmed up those pillow cases. This is not the life of a “normal” middle aged male I’m living.