May 2, 2023 - I suppose that all of us can look back over our lives and find holes there. When we step back and look closely, our lives appear as missing teeth. These missing teeth represent the things that we always wanted but were never able to acquire.
In the early 1960s as the head of a young family I never made a lot of money. There were some things that I felt would make life a little easier for myself and the family if only I could afford them. Among them were:
A Station Wagon: I would see these forerunners of the SUV pass me with happy kids playing on a pallet in the back of the vehicle. My two were fighting each other in the back seat of our sedan. I longed to have a station wagon so I could put them in the back, lock the doors, and motor on down the road in peace. Every time I bought a new car I always priced a station wagon first. But, these vehicles were usually at least $1,000 higher than the sedan. Back when a new Ford cost $3,000, the extra thousand was a pretty high hill to climb, just for convenience sake. Even today I see SUV’s with several children in the back watching their own TV sets and playing computer games on their laptop. “That must be an ideal travel situation”, I say to myself. What a convenient way to travel from point A to point B.
A Toilet In The Car: Scientists were able to put men on the moon in the 1970s. Yet, they have never been able to design a car toilet. I always wanted this little luxury very badly. Two members of my family had what I call the “teeny weeny bladder syndrome” which meant frequent stops at hard-to-find restrooms. Now days with interstate freeways with numerous state-of-the-art rest areas, and convenience stores at frequent exit ramps, finding a restroom is no problem. But this was not so in the 1960s and into the 1970s. Rest rooms were difficult to find, so I wanted to install a toilet in the back seat of my car. Perhaps it would fold down from out the back seat. I could close my eyes and picture someone reporting a need for a restroom and I would say, just pull it down from the back seat and use it. No searching and no stopping for me. Well, I probably would not have been financially able to purchase a car toilet had it been invented anyway.
A Drain In The Kitchen Floor: When my kids were quite young, they made a terrible mess in the kitchen. The floor would be littered with dropped food and spilled milk. I had noticed tiled floors in rest rooms and showers that sloped down to a drain in the middle. I thought it would be great to have a kitchen floor like that. After a meal I could just hose down the table, chairs, and floor and it all go down the drain. All of this could be accomplished in just a few minutes, and no mopping would be required. Surely my wife would approve of this idea. Sadly sometimes practicality gets trumped by aesthetics.
A Camping Tent: I was never a real outdoorsy person. However, as a teenager, my father purchased a 10x12 tent to use when fox hunting. It was a nice tent with a floor, which he assured me no snake could penetrate. I admit it was fun to camp out with Coleman lanterns and a Coleman cook stove. Once when my children will still pretty young, we all spent a night in a tent on Lake Murvall. My Uncle Buckalew owned a cabin on the lake, so we set up dad’s tent outside his cabin just a few feet from the water. Apparently we had invaded the territory of a red bug (chigger to some folk) colony. By morning we were all covered with bites and had to pack up the tent and head for home, scratching all the way. In spite of this unpleasant event, I still longed for a nice tent to use on fishing trips. However, the prices never seemed to be in my range, and I didn’t have a station wagon in which to transport it anyway.
A Bass Boat: I was bitten by the fishing bug at an early age, and had accumulated a good assortment of fishing equipment by the time I married. However, I had never owned a boat. Most of my time was spent bank fishing at Bland Lake, or a private pond. Occasionally, McNeil Sanders would allow me to use his boat to fish Bland Lake out in the deep waters. After the kids came along, all my “extra” money was used for their necessities. I was always a little envious of those guys who could afford a nice bass boat, large motor, and a trailer. Finally when we moved to Ft. Worth in the early 1980s, I decided that I had waited long enough for a bass boat. I found a not-so-expensive rig in Montgomery Ward that I decided to purchase and pay out on the installment plan. However, even after several visits to the store with purchasing in mind, I could never locate a salesman to prepare the paperwork. I finally gave up on the idea of buying the rig. In my older age, I have settled for a fourteen-foot aluminum jon boat with a trolling motor, and no trailer. It takes two people to load and unload it into my pickup, so it mostly just sits until my son returns home for a visit. Then it gets a workout.
Well, looking back on all of this, it would have been a convenience to own even one or two of these items. But, we all survived without them. I challenge you to think back on all the things that you wanted but could never afford to purchase. Or, maybe you were one of those who could afford them. My hat’s off to you.
