Yes, our mom worked at a minimum wage store job, and our father
sometimes sent 3/8th of his monthly pay check to support the 4/5th of his family, but we managed to have quite a bit of fun
anyway.
Both my parents were good at handling money.
Sometimes on Friday nights, I orgznized my brother and sister to take the
bus downtown, a forty minute ride to Hasting Street, to meet Mom when she got off work. We were to look for new basic
clothes, have a snack, and just look about at other store goods.
We ate risky foods then, like hot
dogs, combined with chocolate malted drinks, and as my internal organs deteriorated from junk foods, I studied books on fashion
models, and their tips to paint your external self. I admired women of the past like Audrey Hepburn and Jean Shrimpton,
and their angular bone structures.
With my mother, I ploughed through sales tables of clothes in the basement
of the department store, alert to expensive fabrics as they brushed my hands, signally a real savings.
Mom being a seamstress taught me tips on how better garments were finished,
their buttons, their matching seams on plaids or stripes or complex patterns.
She liked to buy broken dark chocolate,
bitter and tasting better with less sugar, or sometimes Lowney's Bridge Mixture. Children's books for my sister and brother.
We left quite contented with our night on the town.
Luxury goods on a restricted budget, saving money while spending it, family
unity with divorce papers flying across Canada, a world of contradictions.
