Some lives are an open book

   There was one thing I could never let my mother catch me doing. And that was reading. Anytime she saw me with my nose in a book, she immediately went into her “I didn’t raise you to waste time like that” spiel and found something for me to sweep or scrub. 

   And spending money on a book was an even bigger no-no. “So! You read it once, then what does it do? Sit and collect dust,” was her standard response. Not like a good broom that you could use for decades.

   Except for our Sunday Missals (which were in Latin and we couldn’t read them anyway) there were only two books in the house: a cookbook and a dictionary. Basic, informative, no-nonsense reading. But then, my mother was a survivor of the Great Depression. And of immigrant parents who spoke little English and never let go of their Old Country ways. Why waste time reading when you could be doing something?

   When my mother passed away in 2003, I went through her house to see what I wanted to keep. Her crochet hooks, yes. Her wringer washer, no. The two books sitting on the step-table? What were they? Not the cookbook and dictionary, but these: The Tightwad Gazette, by Amy Dacyczyn and Make It Last by Earl Proulx. What a surprise. Not so much that she had these books in the house, but that she wasn’t the author of both of them. From cover to cover, there was hardly a tightwad tip that she hadn’t used long before those books were published.

   And now, since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share some of these hints with any penny-pinching moms who might be reading. 

   For a crib, use a dresser drawer lined with towels. For a diaper pail, use a 5-gallon bucket from dry wall compound. Make jump ropes by braiding strips of plastic bread bags and volleyball nets by tying together six-pack rings. If your kids want to play the guitar, don’t waste money on picks. Make them out of an expired credit card. If you don’t have credit cards, an old detergent bottle will do. And the things you can do with old pantyhose? Oy, you have to read the book!

   But both books, which are available at the Gwinnett library, were more than a list of tightwad techniques. Dacyczyn did the math and challenges her readers with chapters like “Is frugality bad for the economy.” In “Creative deprivation,” she explains that it’s not just about the money. Proulx includes handyman history and real life anecdotes that inspired his frugal ways. Including how he recycled an old wringer washer.

   When it came to book value, my mother and I were never on the same page. How uncanny, now that she’s departed this world, my memories of her life remain an open book.

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