Aug. 02, 2007 - 22:06 MDT

HOW ?

From the age two and a half to sixteen we lived in a small two room house, on the alley with a huge front yard.

To this day I can't understand how Mom, Dad and I lived in such a small space.

I guess it was much as the Japanese I saw over there. Very small living quarters, space treasured and the greatest use made of it. Possessions seemed to be only heirlooms and such. Yet much joy and comradeship came from places like that.

Dad kept charts and graphs on the stock market, he drew them up from the quotations in the daily paper. He also ran a small approval stamp business, of which Mom and I took a small part.

One of my duties was to take bulk "mission mixture" stamps, soak them off the paper and lay them out to dry. Later sorting them.

He and Mom would talk about various customers and what they could expect from them - time wise and payment wise.

Mom made friends with a lady in New Zealand who often sent magazines with New Zealand pictures and things like that.

I got into stamp collecting as well, strangely my bureau drawers were full of loose stamps and my stamp album as well.

Some of my classmates began collecting stamps and often an evening would be spent at our house, trading stamps or gathering information from my Dad about various countries.

But still it was tight quarters for us. Mom and Dad both had to have clothes to wear to work, so the closet was pretty full.

I think six persons could be seated around our table- four chairs and a bench seating two pulled up nicely. Usually my mother's brother Uncle Les would cook the dinner and he was such a good cook, managing on that old coal range to put out a fantastic meal, all hot and ready to eat at the same time. The sixth place at the table sometimes would be his girlfriend, or lacking one perhaps a friend of mine or Mom and Dad's.

Heather and I are old now, the kids raised and in their own homes, just the two of us. But we seem to be somewhat overhwelmed with possessions.

Makes me think back with wonder, three people ? Two rooms ? HOW ? . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog