Growing up in a small midwestern town had its challenges and rewards. Our generation was lucky to be the offspring of people who lived through The Great Depression and WWII. Our parents knew what hard times were. They understood what it was like to be hungry and not to be able to find a job. They worried about being able to pay the rent and whether their brother would come home from some far away land.

It’s hard to imagine, but when I was a kid, television wasn’t available in small towns. Computers, pagers and cell phones hadn’t been invented. On Saturday night, the whole family listened to the radio for entertainment. There was only one telephone in the house. It had a dial and came in one color, black. If you were lucky, you only had one other family on your party-line which meant that you shared the line with your neighbor.

When I was a kid, time seemed to move slowly. The school year dragged on and summer seemed to last forever. Towards the end of August, parents everywhere started talking about the new school year. Conversations about school supplies, new shoes, and school clothes bounced around the dinner table.

My Mom was a depression kid and never threw anything away. To this day she still washes tinfoil. Don’t get me wrong. Mom wasn’t a tightwad, she was frugal, a product of her past. As Dad said, “She could stretch a buck”. As an example, she never bought paper towels because they were tossed away after one wipe. We used rags that were washed over and over and reused until they fell apart.

With some hesitation, I recall the fall that I was to enter the 5th grade. I was finally one of the bigger kids in school with only the 6th graders being my senior. We thought we were big shots and pretty cool. All the boys wore Levi’s and the style was to roll the bottoms into cuffs. The only brand that was “cool” were Levi’s, nothing else would do.

One day Mom went shopping. She came home with bags full of all the necessary stuff on the list of school supplies. It was fun looking at my new pencil box with the built in sharpener and a lid that doubled as a ruler. A new box of crayons, an eraser, #2 lead pencils and a big-ruled writing tablet with an Indian chief on the cover rounded out the list. Best of all was the new metal lunch box with a small thermos bottle inside. Oh yeah… it had a picture of Hopalong Cassidy on the cover along with his horse. Mom could tell that I was pleased with my new supplies. It was then she mentioned how J.C. Penney had a sale on jeans and that she had bought a pair for me to wear to school. I cringed as I pulled them out of the big paper bag. Instantly, I detected that there was no genuine Levi leather patch by the back belt loops. There was no little red tag sewn on the back pocket. There was no little watch pocket on the front! I was so stunned and horrified that I barely heard her mention how warm they would be this winter. As I looked at the pants, I was suprised to find that the inside was lined in red flannel! My mind went into fast forward thinking about the cuffs that would look like red donuts around my ankles! I could already hear the 6th graders laughing. I could see my friends acting like they didn’t know me. The girls were all pointing and giggling. My Mother could see that I did not like the jeans and, bless her heart, she never made me wear them. Before the new school year started she took them back to Penneys and exchanged them for a pair of real Levi’s.

It is now 53 years later and it’s January in Northern Michigan. It’s cold outside and the fire is crackling in our fireplace. It’s warm and cozy in our cottage as I sit here in my favorite pair of flannel-lined jeans.