Poor but didn't notice

When I was a boy my mother and I lived in a two room apartment in what once was a single family, center hall colonial.  We moved there when I was four, so I have no recollection of where we lived before that.

How my mother found this place I never thought to ask, but we didn't have a car so she didn't stumble on it driving by. I do remember her paying the rent every month - $25. That was a lot of money in the '50s (about $220 in 2014 dollars!).

The only source of income was a monthly welfare check. I don't know how much that was but we had no extravagances. There was always heat (although the house had a single thermostat and the lady downstairs controlled it and kept it too cold for us upstairs). Did I mention our bathroom was at the top of the central stairway outside our apartment?

I remember getting my clothes from Boynton's, a store downtown. Boys clothes were on the second floor and they'd be folded flat on a bunch of tables.  Mom had an account there so she would charge whatever she bought. I never thought about price but mom made sure my clothes had room for me to grow into them. They also sold Boy Scout uniforms there which is another story but suffice it to say Mom was concerned about how expensive "all the stuff they make you buy" cost.

One Thanksgiving Mom somehow got a voucher for all the makings of a full dinner. All we had to do was go and get it. I remember walking up the East Main Street hill to the First National Supermarket across Broad Street. When we go to the store we were amazed at all the stuff in one meal! The turkey was at least 12 pounds. We ended up filling my wagon and walking the bounty home.

Cooking that turkey was an experience! We both learned that the neck and gizzards are inside the bird. She had no idea how to cook it. Not sure how it turned out but all I remember is eating the canned cranberry sauce.

Being on welfare covered medical and dental, I guess because I got all my shots and spent a lot of time in the dentist chair. I don't recall my mother ever complaining about bills for any of that.

About that rent, I remember when it went up to $35 a month and Mom was frantic. I guess it worked out somehow because we stayed there until I enlisted in the Navy.

20/20 Rear vision

When you're living your life things just seem to happen. There doesn't seem to be any plan or guide or schedule. Especially when you're a kid. Your frame of reference is what happens around you. Things that become routine like going out to play after eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast and not going too far from the house so you can hear Mom yell when it was lunch time and when the guy next door would come home from work and pull his car into the driveway which meant it was close to dinner time and sitting in front of the TV watching whatever it was Mom wanted to watch and going to bed with the TV still on and falling asleep to the flickering light from it in the dark room and the low volume of the dialog and music. Next day, same thing - unless there was school.

Mom was always there. There was always cereal in the morning, even though we were on welfare. I could go outside alone or with friends, play until I got called or got tired, and know there was a house to go into, even if that house was actually a 2 room apartment, one of 4 apartments in a converted center hall colonial house in Connecticut.

What you don't realize when you're a kid enjoying life is that someone actually is making decisions and doing things that you don't see or know about -- that is, you don't know about until you're older and you look back. That's what this blog is about. Recollections of an adult about his childhood and all the things his mother was doing that I knew nothing about until I grew up and became a parent myself.