Sharon Kennedy

Last week on Facebook’s Throwback Thursday, I posted a picture of my sister holding a fish. She looked so forlorn in that photo, I quickly posted two more where she was smiling. I have no idea who caught the fish, but I do remember we kids were asked to hold it while Mom snapped pictures. By her own admission, she was no photographer. She usually managed to cut off our heads or get her thumb over the shutter. The fact the fish photos turned out so good was nothing short of amazing.

The clothes we were wearing looked like ones taken from the rag bag or the Halloween trunk. One thing I love about the old days is the total lack of sophistication when it came to our apparel. We had nice clothes for school and church, but as soon as we got home from either, we hung up our things and changed into our old clothes. We wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing something good around the house let alone to the barn.

I can’t imagine any child of the 21st century slipping into a pair of old shoes, wearing overalls underneath a dress, or wrapping a cotton bandana around her hair and allowing her photo to be taken. Kids of today are style conscious. I feel sorry for parents who can’t afford name brands and designer clothes for their children, but I feel even sorrier for the kids. If they need a label to define them and their value as a human being, I say fie on the adults who equate labels with worth and pass this warped way of thinking along to children.

Things have changed so much since I was young. I don’t recall coveting anything worn by singers, actresses, or fashion models. As I often say, life was simple in the old days. Dad bought our first television set in 1956. On a good day, we pulled in one channel from Canada. If the weather was bad and the outside antenna had pitched too much in one direction or the other, we got snow instead of a picture. We watched Howdy Doody. He wore the same clothes we did–a plaid shirt and overalls. There were no ads for fancy clothes. The only ad I recall was one for ENO, a mild and gentle gas relief product. I remember it because the jingle was catchy and there was a little fellow who pulled down three window shades symbolizing the E N O.

My sister loved movie magazines, but I don’t remember seeing ads for expensive shoes or dresses. Once a year we got a Christmas catalog from Ward’s or Penney’s. Although we looked at every page until it was dog-eared, our interest was in the toys, not the clothing. There were no inserts in the newspaper, no junk catalogs promoting the latest trends, no loud television ads proclaiming our lives would be better and our futures brighter if we wore something designed by a person from France or Italy. We were lucky. Free from outside influences, we thought our attire was appropriate and perfectly acceptable to those around us.

When I looked at the photographs I posted, I laughed at our get-ups. We looked ridiculous, but we didn’t know it. When you turn the pages of your old photo albums, many of your pictures will probably resemble mine. We were a rag tag bunch. Our summers were about listening to Tiger baseball games on the radio, playing outside until the dark forced us in, building teepees in the woods, and enjoying every day before the dreaded one in September that signaled the beginning of a new school year.

For those of us who lived on a farm there were daily chores. I’m sure we grumbled but we never questioned why the cows had to be milked twice a day or why we had to turn bales of hay over so they would dry on the underside. In those days, bales were manageable. The round ones were easy to roll, but the square ones took a little more effort than one good push from our right foot. And, of course, we were always on the lookout for the field mice hidden underneath the bales. Did we worry about what we looked like? Such a thought never entered our mind as we turned bales, picked berries and wildflowers, or dug potatoes.

As we played in the woods or worked in the fields or vegetable garden, we didn’t dream about clothes. At the end of the day, we hoped for a night at the drive-in theater with our parents, concession stand popcorn, and a bottle of orange Nesbitt we didn’t have to share with our siblings. The simple pleasures reflected our simple way of life. We didn’t realize the days of our youth would be some of the happiest.

Mom didn’t write anything on the back of the photographs, so I have no idea what year it was or which season. I have even less idea who caught the fish, but it must have been a big deal because it’s the only fish photo in our albums. There are no pictures of the perch Dad brought home from ice fishing, only memories of scaling his catch. If you want to see the photos, my link is HYPERLINK “https://www.facebook.com/sharon.kennedy.7965” https://www.facebook.com/sharon.kennedy.7965

Editor’s note: Sharon M. Kennedy of Brimley is a humorist who infuses her musings with a hardy dose of matriarchal common sense. She writes about everyday experiences most of us have encountered at one time or another on our journey through life. Her articles are a combination of present day observations and nostalgic glances of the past. She can be reached via email at sharonkennedy1947@gmail.com. In addition, Sharon has compiled a collection of stories from her various newspaper columns. The title of her book is “Life in a Tin Can.” Copies are available from Snowbound Books on North Third Street in Marquette.