Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201280490
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SHEPHERD'S PIE AND 1 CAR: THOSE WERE THE DAYS
A younger reporter was saying recently that he gets upset with older men who tell him about coming up "the hard way."He didn't know anything about that, he said, not having come up that way.
Of course, this kind of thing makes most men my age immediately begin to remember their economic past as being much worse than it really was.
Old men did the same thing when I was a boy.
Most of them, for example, had memories of breaking the ice in the water pitcher to tidy up in the morning - a natural act for a schoolboy who didn't have central heat or indoor plumbing.
They had a simple, monastic breakfast, usually oatmeal cooked on a stove fired by coal or wood, and walked to school in frequent blizzards that would have been fatal to the children they knew in their declining years.
Many of them quit after the sixth grade - which is understandable, given the number of blizzards they would have had to survive to get high school diplomas.
The above is not meant to be sexist. I have mentioned only ancient former schoolboys because the older women of my youth had no such recollections. At least, they didn't talk about them.
To be truthful, when I was growing up in Waynesboro I didn't have central heat, or indoor bathrooms, or electric lights, a radio or a telephone.
I don't want to over-age myself here. All of these amenities had been invented years before my childhood. We just couldn't afford them.
Which leads me to suggest that the business reporter probably is right about not knowing anything about the "hard way."
My own children, although not raised in luxury, certainly never knew about breaking the ice in the pitcher. They rode to school. And they closed the schools when snowfalls far below blizzard specifications occurred.
But before and after the children came, a certain respectable poverty continued for me.
Prices were lower. A honeymoon suite at the Hotel Roanoke cost less than $13 in 1952, but newly married and well past 20, my wife and I still did not own a car.
We bummed a ride to the hotel on our wedding night. We had vast knowledge of the schedules and habits of Greyhound buses.
My first job paid $40 a week - which was better than the 50 cents an hour, no time-and-a-half for overtime, I made as a student assistant doing public relations at Roanoke College.
It took years to reach $100 a week - which would have been very good wages 20 years before.
We bought our first new car in 1962 - a Ford Falcon station wagon financed with a balloon note that allowed a payment of $50 a month.
The balloon was a lovely thing. At the end of the $50-a-month payoff period, usually 18 months, the entire amount of the note outstanding became due.
What you did was trade in the car before the balloon was due, have that amount subtracted from the trade-in value and have enough for a down payment on another new car.
Now, most people stretch their car payments out for four or five years so that the bite of the monthly payment won't be as hurtful.
We gave each of our children a car when they got out of college. They were not new cars.
One was a 1968 Mustang, bought outright. The other was a 1967 Impala, inherited from my parents, and a 1982 Escort, just newly paid for.
I liked life a lot when the children were young. You had to watch the grocery bill and this had certain advantages.
For one thing, we used to have a dish called shepherd's pie that was cheap and filling and fattening and possibly fatal and awfully, awfully good.
I haven't had a shepherd's pie for 25 years. I think somebody wrote a surgeon-general's warning on the recipe.
Incidentally, our version of the shepherd's pie was wonderfully seasoned hamburger steaming in a huge container of mashed potatoes - the potatoes browned around the top.
Through most of the time the children were at home, we owned one car - a situation that would be impossible for today's families in which both parents work.
Of course, you get a little sad when your children grow up and make money of their own, but you tend to smile a lot when you find out you have a little money left over after the bills are paid for the month.
When something happens to the electricity and it costs more than $300 to fix it, you don't scream, tear your clothing and throw ashes in your hair because you don't have $300 right then.
You find that you can pay off your credit cards every month, instead of going with the minimum payment - a financial device that served us well over the years.
If the refrigerator goes bad, you might scream a little, but this failure does not have the dry-throated feeling of fiscal disaster about it.
You still exaggerate when you talk about how bad things were when you were child.
And you wonder how things are going to be in retirement.
At least, there'll be central heat and indoor plumbing and a car of sorts.
How to make Shepherd's Pie
1 lb. ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 can vegetable soup, undiluted, or 1 can mushroom soup
1 tbsp. chopped pepper
6 large or medium Irish potatoes
In large saucepan, cook beef over medium-high heat until brown. Saute onion, stirring, three minutes, and add to meat. Add soup and chopped pepper. Boil potatoes and mash, adding butter and salt to taste.
Spread meat in large oven-proof baking dish and cover the meat with hot mashed potatoes, covering with melted butter. Bake in oven preheated to 400 degrees until potatoes are brown.