Making Do

[e_moon60]

There's another name for this now, but when I was growing up, my mother could make useful things (and did) out of all sorts of stuff.  Nothing was thrown away (it might be given away) as long as it had any use in it.  She made end tables out of apple boxes, painted them so they were bright an attractive.  She had other furniture, but mostly she

Comments

[e_moon60]

And just to complete the proof of how old I am...the day after Thanksgiving was the day after Thanksgiving, not Black Friday. Not only were stores not open ridiculously early, they were not open on Thanksgiving. Store workers got Thanksgiving off, all of it.

Christmas decorations in stores did not go up before Thanksgiving, and usually waited until Dec. 1 or later. Thanksgiving decorations did not show up before Hallowe'en, either. Such as they were, they showed up at most two weeks before. (Generic "fall" and "harvest" decorations--totally inappropriate for where I grew up since we did not have any trees that changed color in the fall, let alone oaks and maple--could be used until then, once we were in October.)

Not counting holidays, stores were closed on Sundays. I remember when the first "convenience" store in town opened, and you could get a few things after 7 pm without calling the store owner and claiming an emergency need for a pound of nails or a new bath towel. Stores often stayed open late on Saturday nights (always before Christmas.) There was no such thing as "open 24 hours." The hamburger place closed at 10, midnight on home football game nights. If you needed a prescription filled after hours, then you called the drugstore's emergency number, woke up the store owner, who woke up the pharmacist, who then drove the prescription to your house because if you needed it in the middle of the night you were too sick to drive.

[gifted]

I still live in a town which has 5pm closing hours, 10pm for the supermarket, and most will be closed on or the day after public holidays. :]