My New Green Tee Shirt

As a child of the Great Depression, I am thrifty. I don’t buy new things as long as the old stuff is serviceable.

Feeling nostalgic, I got out my family scrapbook. I found a photo of John and me sitting under the Christmas tree in our little house in Albuquerque in 1988. With a shock I realized I’d worn the same blue blouse just two days before. It is still in my closet in 2011

The furniture in my apartment is all old: from Albuquerque the hand-crafted “Santa Fe style” coffee table John had a crazy Hispanic build in 1989, in front of the blue couch from Chicago I persuaded Wally to buy for our new home in 1960, facing two little arm chairs my mother bought when our family moved into the house on Cooper Street in Fort Worth in 1942.

People compliment me on how attractive my apartment is. I don’t tell them I studied interior design at the Art Institute of Chicago and worked as a reporter covering the home furnishings market in Chicago. Experts taught me how to make a room look good. .

Right now I have thousands of dollars in my checking account. With the stock market driven up to ridiculous heights and bank c.d.’s paying nothing, I gave up trying to invest the money from the sale of my house in Garland. So this year I bought a whole new wardrobe.

My new green tee shirt pictures a cat lying in a hammock. Not a white cat, like Charlie, but a black and white cat. Above the recumbent animal is printed, “I would be unstoppable if I could just get started.”

That’s exactly how I feel today. “My get up and go has got up and gone.” Instead of lying in a hammock, I lie back in my recliner and brood about the sad situation of the world today. Charlie climbs on top of me. I tell him all Congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, are greedy rich guys who deceive the public. Charlie does not argue. He jumps down and ambles into the bedroom and curls up to nap on my soft green quilted coverlet.

In coming weeks, I’ll try to stir myself and, putting aside my travels, I’ll send you blogs commenting on current events. In 82 years of reading, traveling, and analyzing, I learned some things about politics, government, economics, etc.

What do my green tee shirt and old furniture have to do with the wreck of our economy? How come I have money in the bank while so many people are buried in debt? I didn’t charge that tee shirt until I had money to pay my entire credit card account each month. My car is paid for. That house I sold did not have a mortgage.

People who have lost their jobs are in a tough situation. I know what it is to be unemployed and without enough money to buy food. I drove to the homeless shelter in my BMW, which I’d bought with cash three years before. An interesting time in my life. I’ll tell you more about it some other time.