Grandmas Goulash

Growing up in the lean years of the Great Depression, my parents learned frugality. How they chose to spend money, however, was as different as natural cheese and processed cheese food. Literally. For my mother, frugality meant buying items at the lowest price or getting them for free. She didn’t buy clothes, if she could get hand-me-downs. She stretched milk with water, always bought oleo and served sandwiches made with slices of the bright orange grease that attempted to masquerade as cheese. She loved saving Green Stamps to purchase free items from their catalog. She justified her frequent impulse purchases by pointing out how much she saved. “Yes, I have enough baskets, but this one was 60 percent off.” My father didn’t indulge in impulse purchases and he was willing to pay for quality. When he did the shopping, we spread real butter on our toast and enjoyed real cheddar or swiss on our sandwiches. With clothing, his penchant for quality didn’t always work in our favor. My...

“Will is so depressed that he has turned to drink, Pa.” “No, he’s depressed that the bottle is empty”, Pa responded omnisciently. In those days, there was just one cure for a migraine, but Dr. Pick was happy to make a house call. “Will it hurt, doctor?” “Just for a second. No patient has ever complained.” Succinctly Yours offers a weekly photo and word as inspiration for your microfiction. How low can you go? Choose the 140 character or 140 word option. This week’s word was  omniscient .

Yesterday, I had my eyes checked. The doctor didn’t like what she saw, so today, I am headed back for a visit with the retinal specialist. My vision hasn’t been good for several years now. It deteriorated quite suddenly, when I became ill, but finally seemed to level off. I can read large print books with the assistance of glasses and I manage just fine online, where the zoom button is my best friend. Hopefully, the doctor’s assessment doesn’t include worsening vision. I can live with large print, but I don’t want to start perusing lists audiobooks See you later. I hope!

How do I define “the good old days”? From a medical perspective, it was the time when I had one doctor and went years without paying him a visit. As my age has increased, so has the number of health care providers. With our recent move, I’ve also been reminded that it has gotten harder to find them. Medicare has an online site to help find a doctor. It tells if a doctor is accepting new patients and if they limit their fees to the Medicare guidelines. The site is not particularly user friendly. It requires opening a lot of pages to get information and could use more filters to limit the search results. I stick to it, because a physician, who doesn’t accept the guidelines, could cost me money that I just don’t have. Armed with a list of potential doctors, I start making calls. “What is your health insurance?” Is invariably the first question that I’m asked when I call the doctor’s office. “Medicare.” There is a moment of dead silence. “That’s your secondary insurance?” a hopef...

First, an apology to Pat, who so kindly offered this story-provoking image. I missed mentioning that in the meme. Thanks,Pat. Long after the plump, juicy fly disappeared into the Clay Pot Jungle, Jeremiah remained hopeful and vigilant. Jeremiah was no Yertle, but Mack was still at the bottom of the pile. In the shadows beyond the edge of Clay Precipice, Hoss chuckled as he watched the pair. Outwitting them was a better buzz than any wine.   Succinctly Yours offers a weekly photo and word as inspiration for your microfiction. How low can you go? Choose the 140 character or 140 word option. This week’s word was  precipice .

When I was young, I read a book about a trip to the moon. Three children snuck into a barn owned by an eccentric professor and found a strange looking machine. They climbed inside to explore and hit the wrong button. The machine became airborne and soon they were on their way to the moon, which, of course, was made of cheese. It was a great story, but obviously fiction. People didn’t fly to the moon. I’m embarrassed to say that I was rather unimpressed by Alan Shepard’s flight into space. Our entire school was packed into the assembly room and directed to watch the small television that was mounted on the wall. The show was over before it had hardly started. Given the television’s size and poor reception, it was difficult to see much. It just couldn’t compare with fictional moon voyages. In 1969, however, I was glued to the television as Neil Armstrong made that first step onto the moon. In my childhood, moon travel had been fiction. Two months before my daughter was born, it was...

I was on summer break from college and working as a waitress in the dining room of a local hotel. At the end of my shift, I’d check in with the cashier, who would exchange any coins I had received for paper money. One of my customers watched this transaction and then gave me some advice. “Cash in everything except the quarters. When they stop making silver quarters, they will be worth more.” It was the first investment advice that I ever received. For a week or two, I followed the advice. Then I needed cash for something and used the quarters. That was the end of saving my silver coins. My customer’s advice was solid. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried to determine what they would have been worth today. I easily received at least ten quarters per day and worked five days per week, so I could have saved at least fifty quarters per week. Multiply that by the ten working weeks of my summer vacation and I would have had five hundred silver quarters. At 25 cents each, that’s a...

They loved their window seat, although they were frequently stunned by the strange behavior of the creatures who passed by. Fifth date, same sill. She’d worn her dancing dress and red hat. Was Fred totally clueless? No one wanted to sit with Hands Solo. He thought he was erudite. They thought he was rude. Succinctly Yours offers a weekly photo and word as inspiration for your microfiction. How low can you go? Choose the 140 character or 140 word option. This week’s word was  erudite .

Ahab cheered his transition from floating wreckage to tiny island, but a steady diet of coconuts was greeted with far less enthusiasm.   When the great white chair washed up, he put aside former animosity, happy to have a companion, although he’d secretly hoped for  Wilson .   Chairy suggested a nap by the water’s edge. Ahab snored as the tide rushed in. When it ebbed, only Chairy remained. Smiling.   Succinctly Yours offers a weekly photo and word as inspiration for your microfiction. How low can you go? Choose the 140 character or 140 word option. This week’s word was  transition .

This was one of those mornings, when I just couldn’t seem to wake up, although Mother Nature tried to help. For the last two days, we have received some much needed rain and it has been accompanied by lots of thunder. I’d forgotten how loud thunder can sound, when it reverberates off surrounding mountains. In lower lying areas, that level of noise would indicate a lightning strike close by and the continuous roll of thunder might indicate an approaching tornado. Here, it is just an echo and I complacently drifted back to sleep. If the house were struck down some day, we’d probably be kicking ourselves for ignoring the warning signs. We wouldn’t be alone. People do that all the time. For a year before we purchased our first home, we lived on my husband’s paycheck and banked mine. A substantial down payment yielded a lower interest rate and provided us with the security of immediate home equity. When my husband lost his job shortly afterwards, we were able to make ends meet. We we...