“The boys are wasting their allowance,” I overheard
Mom telling Dad one evening back in the late 1950s, “they don’t seem to
understand how hard money is to earn.”
Was that the end of our income? Maybe that squirting flower from Johnson and
Smith for 50 cents I bought, and Ev’s 75 cent whoopee cushion were wasteful,
but didn’t they remember we each bought a gun too?
My three brothers and I didn’t get much spending money
when we were young. We worked hard on
the farm, especially in the summer when school was out. If we wanted something, we had to ask Mom or
Dad for the money—and rarely was it forthcoming.
Then in 1955, in recognition that we did work hard,
Mom and Dad decided to give us each a heifer calf. In three years, when it had a calf of its own
and started producing milk, we would get a share of the milk produced.
Prior to the allowance, we earned money by picking
pickles for Gedneys and string beans for Stokelys. Of course, we never saw any of it as it was
saved for school clothes—3 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, five underwear and socks,
coat, hat and boots.
Back in the 1950s, with Ezra Taft Benson keeping
farm prices low, milk averaged about $3 per hundred pounds. Our Guernsey’s produced about 10,000 lbs of
milk per year, so doing the math a cow should earn $300 per year, an allowance
of about $6 per week, a vast sum of money for us three older boys ranging from 10-13
years old. And by 1957, our calves were
mothers and in production with the money rolling in!
My first buy was a single shot 22, Western Field
from Montgomery Wards. It was not quite
the cheapest 22 you could buy, but I liked it.
Brother Everett, at age 11, the magic age for owning a 22 in our family,
got his for $12, a J.C. Higgins model.
Some of our money went for clothes, some for junk
food, and even a little for the church collection plate. One month we saved up
and Ev and I put in $25 each and Dad the other $25 to buy a Sears Jon boat. No motor, just oars, but a boat of our
own. It is still in use here at the
cabin.
I can’t remember what Marv, the oldest, spent his
money on. I do remember he was always
getting postage stamps “on approval” for his stamp albums. He bought a 16 gauge shotgun with an
adjustable choke from Wards—I think that was almost a half year of savings. As
an older man of 14, his money didn’t burn a hole in his pocket so quickly as Ev
and me.
I got into radios and electronics and spent money on
magnet wire, double cotton covered copper wire and crystals to make my own
radio sets. I bought a Slinky, a
gyroscope, a drinking duck, a crooks radiometer, items that matched my interest
in science.
What caused our downfall, and eventually dried up
the allowances was the Johnson and Smith catalog, promising 3000 novelty items.
We loved to read the Johnson and Smith catalog. It had everything in the order of magic
tricks, whoopee cushions, chattering false teeth and x-ray glasses to see
through clothes. Nearly each allowance we ordered something new from the
catalog. What came in the mail rarely
met our heightened expectations from reading the catalog. The wonderful tame “seahorses” turned out to
be microscopic shrimp. We bought all
sorts of items; toy steam boats, and finally some magic tricks and the whoopee
cushion and squirting flower. Rarely did we receive items that were as good as
promised, but our optimism was unbounded for the next order.
If we had been able to curb our enthusiasm in
squirting every adult in the neighborhood and having every visitor sit on the
whoopee cushion it is likely our allowance would have continued beyond the one
year trial. But, life is harsh and lessons
too often are learned the hard way.
