Keeping My Budget
My allowance was ten cents per week. Out of
this I had to pay five cents church collection, two cents Sunday
school collection and three cents for Explorers' dues. 'There'
went my allowance!
There was a little store just a few doors
up the street and they sold double-dip (two scoop) ice cream cones
for five cents. They also had such an array of penny candy that
a person might just have trouble making up their mind. I liked
licorice and they had lots of variety in that, too. They had pipes,
which I liked, but my favourite was a licorice plug. It was a
rectangular piece of licorice about two inches by one inch, with
a small, coloured metal Indian's head in the middle and they were
'two' for a penny!
Anyway, about the ice cream cones........
Each week, year-round, my mother would buy one bottle of Wilson's
"Golden Amber" Ginger Ale. That was a week-end treat
- a glass each for the five of us. In the middle of the week,
in the warm weather, Mom would give me that empty glass bottle,
worth five cents, to take to the store and exchange it for an
ice cream cone. The man always seemed to put extra on it and I
savoured every lick. In the winter I didn't get the bottle money
for ice cream, but, Mom would give me a penny for candy - usually
mid-week.
When Dad came home from a business trip
he would hold out both hands, fists closed, and I was to choose
one. I could have whatever money was in that hand. It could be
two cents, three cents, four cents or even five cents. Now this
did not happen every week so I 'really' had to figure. I knew
that I wanted to always have a birthday gift and a Mothers' Day
gift for Mom, and then there was Christmas.
Well, I think that I worked it out very
well. When it snowed really hard in the winter, I would hurry
home from school and shovel for hours, our walks and steps, as
well as the maiden ladies' next door. I would keep on until the
sidewalks were bare and finally the neighbours came home from
work.
The first time I did this they were so
pleased that they gave me a whole dime, and, any other time after
that - the same. I couldn't believe it. I went home, cold and
wet right through, happily spilling the dime out of my mitten
to show my mother. She smiled and told me that I had better get
out of my wet things and get warm.
When my father came home and asked who
had cleared the snow, I proudly told him that I had. Mom added
the fact that I had also done next door and earned a dime. Dad's
blue eyes twinkled and he said that if I had earned ten cents
for doing one, he supposed that I should get ten cents for doing
the other. He put his hand in his poeket, brought out what change
he had and gave me a shiny dime, telling me that he couldn't have
done a better job himself.
In the spring, summer and fall, I would
babysit my little baby cousin. I was only nine and he wasn't really
'little' - he was quite a size for me to lift, change, feed, dress,
and carry down a long flight of stairs to his carriage and walk
him around in the fresh air. This was all done because I wanted
to do it but every couple of weeks I would be given a nickel or
dime. This money was saved in my little piggy-bank and that is
how I managed to always have enough to visit the Woolworth store
at Christmas and birthday times. ~Joan Adams Burchell~ (copyright)
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