I remember when I was little, I used to hide under my grandmother’s quilting frame and listen to her and the women in our family complain about how expensive everything was. I asked Mom why Grandma liked to make quilts. She said it was too expensive to buy them already made. 

I loved our handmade quilts and thought Grandma was wise to know how to do things like make jam and jelly, can fruit, bake bread, and make pies. She learned practical things, and she knew how to save money.

Growing up in the 1950s, my world was filled with hopscotch, saddle shoes, and black-and-white TV. Elvis was everyone’s heartthrob. We were practicing “bomb drills” in our school basement. The fear of “the bomb” was real, even if we didn’t understand it. 

Moving forward to my grade school years, we used to buy movie tickets at school. They came on a card with perforations. Each ticket cost $.25. The whole card cost three dollars and would allow us to go to the movies every Saturday afternoon for 12 weeks.