DAD'S SOCKS

DAD'S SOCKS

We eight kids in my family were poor when we were very young but we didn't know it. We made do with what we had and were often creative with how we had fun. I remember Dad making a marble game out of wood, newspaper kites, a go kart that rarely ran, stilts and how he taught us to whip green persimmons off of the end of a very flexible, long stick. We climbed trees and swam in a creek that turned out to be sewer drainage. Mom refused to let us come in the house until she hosed us down when we returned home. There were little green snakes hanging off of every other branch around that creek. We also got in trouble for swimming in what my sister labeled "the skunk pond." It was where the pigs went to "bathe." When it froze over, we "ice skated" on the pond with just our shoes. I had a pair of shoes with taps so I could fly across that pond. We swung on "grape vines" over another creek. They weren't really grape vines but we called them that anyway.

The way we used Dad's work socks is what I think of most often. We used them as Christmas stockings, hanging them on the wall with a tack, making a hole in the wallpaper with each sock. We checked their contents Christmas morning after we opened presents. There was always an orange, walnuts, chocolate candy with nuts, colorful hard candy, lint-covered unwrapped candy and a few pieces of disgusting candy. 

We also used Dad's socks to play in the snow, mostly for making snowballs. I was in Jr. High before I became fashion conscious and would no longer wear Dad's socks as mittens. If I had no gloves, I did without, but I still made snowballs until my hands turned bright red and my fingers could no longer move. 

Living poor makes a person tough. I recommend it for all children but not so much the parents who, in the case of my parents, had to stress over every bill, clothing for eight kids, school supplies, gas for Dad to get to work, food, etc. Yet somehow we made it. Dad moved up in his job and the last two of the eight children do not remember being poor. We relied on the Lord through all those years and still do. Our socks are now new, our own, and can only be found on our feet, never our hands or the walls.