Living on a shoestring

Being an Ant is challenging. I have forgotten just how good I used to be at stretching a dollar, or even a dime. When the kids were little, and we were a one income family, I had many opportunities to try to get by on little or nothing.
Our first house note was 76.00 a month. Our car note was 95.00 a month and we had no credit to pay. Still, we struggled as Martin mad a whopping 600.00 a month before deductions. Basically, we saw about 110.00 a week to live on. That was in 1976. Somehow, we had all we needed to get by. Thinking about this, I began to remember the ways that I "helped" our budget. There was a salvage store that sold canned goods that were damaged, dented or just about to go out of date. Canned goods, such as vegetables, fruits, cat and dog food and other stuff were a great bargain. I visited this place often, and one day I saw a huge pile of cans that had no labels. A sign on one giant pile said, "vegetables" and a sign on another said, "fruits". There was also a pile for pet food and a pile of canned tuna. The amazing things was, that each can, no matter what it was cost only a nickle. Remember, there were no labels on these cans, so you were really taking a chance to buy them, but that didn't stop me, as I saw an opportunity to feed my brood for a bargain. I borrowed a marker and going to the piles, I put a V on the veggies and an F on the fruits. T for tuna and P for pet, and I loaded up a couple of baskets with my found treasure. Martin almost died when he came home and found me still trying to find places for all of these cans, and fortunately I had already put most of them together in the pantry in their class. It seems that it didn't take long for the marks to fade, so I was soon on my own when deciding what to serve. I learned that corn shakes different than green beans, and peas had a different sound too. Creme corn was no problem, but once in awhile, I made a mistake and opened two different kinds of vegetables. Fruits were different. Applesauce was easy to recognize by shaking, but peaches, mandarin oranges and fruit cocktail all sound just about the same. It became a game of chance to try to get two cans of peaches at the same time. The real problem was the tuna and pet food. They are in the same size cans, and shake the same. Most of the time I got tuna instead of friskies, but once in awhile the cat got a bonus dinner because I opened a can of tuna instead of cat food. I fondly remember the day when I could go back to buying cans with labels- it made life so much easier!
Then came the day when we had an experience similar to the Pioneers in Montrose camp on the way west, when the quails fell out of the sky. When the kids were small, we lived out in the country, and since we had about an acre of land, we utilized it as much as possible. We had a milk cow, some chickens, geese, rabbits and a couple of pigs. There was space for a small garden. We milked the cow, gathered eggs, (and on occsasion had chicken and dumplings from an ornery rooster), made sausage from the pigs and in general, used all of our talents to make the little area pay off for us. One day in the summer, we were coming home from church, and came up behind a semi-truck that had partially turned over. It was a truck taking chickens to the slaughter house, and some of the chickens had escaped their doom, running all over the street in all directions. "Stop the car!" I screamed, and as Martin tried to brake, I jumped out and took stock of the situation. I ordered the kids out of the car, (we had 4 under the age of 7 and number 5 was on the way. I began to comandeer a chicken catching operation, giving the kids bags and anything else we had so that we could catch the loose ones and throw them into the car. I remember Sissy and Bobbie Jo grabbing chickens in a contest to see who could get the most, but the winner was Martin, as his long legs and arms gave the poor chickens almost no chance at all! We had about 25 chickens captured and in the car, when a man came up and asked us what were were doing, catching the chickens. I motioned for the kids to get back in the car, and said, "What chickens?" and Martin sped off. It seems that chickens do not like to ride in open spaces, for soon their nervousness was evident by the patches of chicken poo all over the back of the car. Fortunatly, we were not too far from home, and got those "poo Birds" out of the car and into a pen. It seems that the chickens were intended to meet their doom anyway, for as soon as the kids went to sleep, Martin and I fired up a large drum of water over a fire outside and began the work of "chicken processing". Yes, we "processed" all of those poor chickens, and put them in the freezer for the future. We worked long into the night, because we didn't want to upset the kids after all their hard work. Funny thing though, they never did ask why the chicken yard didn't seem much more crowded- maybe they knew more than we thought. The private joke between Martin and I was that we were having fried "road kill", and when we laughed about it, everyone thought we were crazy. Then, there were the rabbits. We had quite a few, and when the babies got to be about 8 weeks old, they were the perfect size for the freezer. Did you know that rabbit does taste like chicken? At least our kids thought so, and we didn't actually tell them that it was rabbit they were eating. That is fine and good, but Martin played a joke on me that is practically unforgiveable. We were having a Relief Society dinner one day, and we all volunteered to bring a dish. Martin told the RS president that he would provide all of the chicken for the dinner, the menu being fried chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls, vegetalbes and pie. I thought that was so kind of him, and since we had all of those chickens in the freezer, I also felt it was a good way to share Heavenly Father's bounty. Sure enough on the day of the dinner, Martin surprised me by bringing several large platters of golden fried chicken to serve. The batter was light and crispy, the meat tender and juicy. If there were no chicken legs, I didn't think that it was strange. The women were eating with gusto, admiring Martin's culinary skills and asking for his recipe. Then, dear old Sister Macon spoke up. She said, "Yes Martin, tell me where you got this tender rabbit meat. I haven't had rabbit meat so fresh and tender since I moved from the country. I would love to have some, where did you get it?" RABBIT MEAT?!!!!
Good grief, you could have heard a pin drop- and then, holy commotion. Part of the women were amazed that rabbit could taste so good, and part of them were heading for the bathroom. Sadder still, part of them were crying, saying that no one should kill Thumper and eat him. I turned a steely gaze on Martin and he grinned at me. "Ha" he said, "These city women would never have know it was rabbit if ole Sister Macon hadn't opened her trap! Did you see the look on their faces? It's worth a million bucks!" "Well, your life ain't worth a plug nickle right about now, Joker Man" I told him. The really bad thing was that those women thought I was in on it. I didn't have a clue as to what Martin had done. I felt so bad, and tried to explain that if I had known what he was up to, I wouldn't have let him do it. Anyway, Martin loves to tell that story, and other's too, like it. All I can say is, if he is cooking for you, ask to see the package the meat came in.
I have many other examples of how we were able to live on a shoe string, and thinking back, it gives me comfort knowing that I do have the knowlege to do so. My kids don't remember doing without anything, and indeed, they comment often on the hearty meals I served each day. Ask them about the chickens, the rabbits and the unlabled cans of food. Those are happy memories for all of us! Love, Nanasee