Contentment | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Contentment | Previous Challenge Entry
By Judy Watters
04/14/08
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Some of my closest friends regard me as frugal, conservative, even a penny pincher, but I come by it justly. From a small child I was taught, “a penny earned, was a penny saved.” I was also taught “a penny spent was gone forever!”
Daddy was a chef by profession. He had cooked on merchant marine ships during WWII. Daddy had also cooked in some of the more exquisite restaurants in New York City. When he decided to settle down and raise a family, he found the beautiful, small town of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, and hired on at Schannaker’s Diner. His expertise at cooking became widely known and Daddy was asked to cook for many great gala events in the town.
But as much as Daddy loved cooking, his secret desire was to be a great farmer. So Mom and Daddy bought a one hundred-acre farm for two thousand dollars. The acreage was beautiful, but the house, two sheds and a barn left much to be desired. The expert farmers around the area laughed at the folly of this city-slicker-would-be-farmer paying such money for that run down farm.
But Daddy never got discouraged, even though every penny he earned as chef went into that farm. Instead, he became a genius at pinching pennies, but not to the detriment of the family. When Daddy felt we actually needed something, he would get it. However, he rarely saw us with a need.
When I was very little, the History teacher in town, Mr. Wooden, built the Y-Drive-In Theater, about 10 miles from home. The dollar-a-car load nights on Fridays were extremely popular, and we kids thought this would be the right price, even for Daddy.
However, Daddy figured everything into that price. Gas would be at least fifty cents there and back. Oil for the car had to be a nickel and the wear and tear on that old car would be more than it could take. Then there would be teasing for drinks, popcorn, and candy. No, this definitely was not a necessity of life.
So my brilliant father came up with what we all thought was a brainy idea. Our beautiful summertime Friday nights were spent in a unique way. The excitement would build as we kids all scurried up and down the cellar steps to retrieve apples and maple sugar candies. Mom would be busy making the Kool-Aid and packing the basket. Popcorn would be popping in the old popper as the anticipation mounted.
When all was in the basket, Mom and the four kids would jump in the old StudeBaker station wagon and wait for Daddy. I remember the tingling feeling when I would finally see the lights in the house go out. Daddy would come out, get in the car and tell us all to hold on and away we would go…around to the living room window. There we would see the window opened wide and our new black and white TV facing out. Gunsmoke would just be starting. We would roll the windows down to hear the popular Gunsmoke music and then settle in to watch Matt Dillon and Chester nab the bad guys once again!
Daddy was so creative in his own way. He had me convinced that he was the smartest man in the whole world. He taught me that many of my wants were just that. As kids, we never thought we were poor. Financially, I guess we were poor, but Daddy taught us all contentment. We always had clothes on our backs and food in our tummies. And we knew we were loved as we ate our popcorn and drank our Kool-aid in the back of that StudeBaker.

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