She looked like many teenage girls-- dewy complexion and Miley Cyrus curls framing a pretty face. She cast her eyes toward the pavement, though, to avoid my smile as I held the door for her and her look-alike Dad rushing to join her from a suburban luxury car. He took the door and held it while thanking me. Her look said, ‘Please don’t notice we’ve come to this.”
I was dropping off clothing after a closet-cleaning spree. The Salvation Army is glad to have wearable donations, plus used books and toys, children’s furniture and anything re-useable. It provides a real service, especially in times like these. Lately, once-more-affluent newcomers have swelled thrift shoppers’ ranks.
The young woman and her Dad separated. He stopped at the collection of books and CD’s and she headed for the racks of women’s clothes. I watched her moving the hangers one by one as she inspected the items arranged by color. She slammed each rejected blouse angrily into the previous unwanted item on the rack, upset that her choices were reduced to this.
Behind her, a baby wailed. His young father comforted him while his mother turned from her inspection of used dishes to set the baby’s pacifier in his mouth. That little family showed none of the teen’s embarrassment. They looked like the usual clientele that enjoys bargain hunting in thrift shops.
The teen finally identified a blouse she could live with. Laundered and starched, it had today’s gypsy fashion look. She marched it over to her Dad who checked the price tag and gave her a cautious nod.
She never smiled. A shirt she could live with as opposed to an item of clothing she loved was a distinction her set jaw made clear. Holding the blouse up for a final inspection, her expression wondered, “Will anyone ever know I got this here?”
By then, Dad was inspecting clothing for young men. He found a Red Sox sweatshirt that looked as if it might fit a son about 10 years old. As he made the decision to take it, his head moved slightly toward one shoulder and he shrugged to himself in resignation.
This tiny drama in the Salvation Army mirrored scenes in supermarkets and other retailers of late. An elderly woman picks up a box of cereal, looks at the price, shakes her head and puts it back on the shelf. A young man in overalls driving a work truck watches the dials spinning at the gas pump and, in the end, replaces the nozzle mumbling curse words to himself. Good friends collecting unemployment make excuses when invited to join us at a local diner. In the drug store, a mother tells a begging child, over and over again, “Mommy can’t pay for that."“That” used to be a ten-dollar toy: now it’s a one-dollar bag of candy. Either way, the child is devastated and the Mom saddened.
My grandparents used to talk about “the Depression.” I am only now able to put a face on what they were remembering, and I am terrified for what the heartless, cold and costly autumn and winter beyond it will bring.
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Photo: Louisiana family, Depression era; Library of Congress Collection
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Comments
That's what they keep telling us-- that things are looking up...I hope you and they are right...I don't see it, frankly.
I hope things will change, but how? Reality is indeed stark.
♥R
Fantastic, outstanding, incredible post Mary Ann.
not the uppers, they have no reason for change, but the lowers, who know they are being destroyed for the convenience of wealth. when did america become a nation of zombies?
Al, thanks for the read/comment...my guess is America became a "nation of zombies" around 2000 when they let George W. Bush
steal the election from Al Gore. We should have taken to the streets and burned Washington DC to the ground then!
Marilyn, thanks for stopping by and for your kind words.
I've run into the pillars of small town society shopping at T.J.Maxx, so embarrassed that they wouldn't speak. I had to smile. What did they have to hide? I was there, too.