I can remember as a teenager being obsessive about the fact that a lot of the girls in my high school had fashionable clothes and wore brands like Aigner and there I was, not fashionable, not wearing any big name brands, and feeling like a total outsider much of the time. It's hard for me to reflect on that because the older, wise me wants to grab teenage me and shake her and go "LIGHTEN UP! CLOTHES DON'T MATTER THAT MUCH!"
My father was a banker. He was super conservative about money. I remember a lecture he gave me about why we didn't live outside of our means. "Other people get a new car every year and take expensive vacations and buy expensive clothes, but WE DON'T because I don't want to carry that much debt. Debt is dangerous," he explained. "What if I got hurt and couldn't work, and we had all that debt?" (His father was an invalid who had emphysema the last ten years of his life so Dad knew a lot about that.)
At the time, I thought Dad was being mean. I really did. I didn't understand why he couldn't let me go to work and save MY money to pay for a trip to France with a group of students my French teacher was taking over there. His argument was that school was more important.
All of this is to say that back then I was easily swayed by popular opinion and I had no idea what was really important. (When I am tempted to condemn teenagers today I admonish myself to go back and remember myself as a teen, and then I hush.)
What prompted me to think about this was that there is a big discussion in one of my Facebook groups about the best brand of pots and pans to buy. What brand of cookware really lasts a long time? There are a lot of names being thrown around of VERY expensive cookware -- Falk Culinair, Le Creuset, etc.
The older I get, the more I realize that I am so fortunate to have been raised by people who know the real value of things.
My mother got several pots and pans for wedding gifts that we still use today, 61 years later. The brand? Revere Ware.My mother has always said "Buy Revere Ware. It will hold up!" We also have a number of Club Aluminum pots that have held up beautifully over the years. I still use Revere Ware and Club Aluminum, all the time, for cooking. Nobody in the Facebook group liked my post about using Revere Ware or Club -- but they have been used for 40-61 years, every piece!
They aren't fashionable right now. You can go on e-bay and pick up pieces very inexpensively.
She is right. It holds up beautifully. I expect my grandchildren will still be cooking with it, if they have sense enough to keep it and not ditch it for something more fashionable.
I have never given it much thought, but I grew up in a house full of antiques. Not fine antiques. Antiques that people really used, in real life. Below are some photos of some things we have had for years. All of these are useful things. The pewter pitcher was given to my grandparents for a wedding gift in 1923. The silvery pitchers were originally copper, and my grandfather decided they were dirty and set to scrubbing them, and scrubbed off all the copper! Mom, who had bought them, thought it was funny, fortunately. The pottery pitcher was bought by my brother in Texas 30+ years ago. I love the rolling pin and the pestle. I'm sure the rolling pin made a ton of fine biscuits back in the day, and the pestle would have been useful for grinding herbs and such. The green bottle likely had a stopper and probably held medicine or "strong spirits".
I tried to iron with the little antique iron once, as a kid. You have to wrap a towel or oven mitt around it to hold it, after you put it near the fire to get hot. Then you have to pray it doesn't stick to whatever cloth you are ironing. Much like my one experiment in cooking on a wood stove, the experience left me very grateful to live in the late 20th / early 21st century. I also think if anyone tried to hurt me or my family I could hit them with that little iron and do some serious damage.
Maybe I am a bit too materialistic but I don't value things that have great monetary value all that much. I value things that were used by the generations before me. The red serving dish below was used by my mother's mother. I remember seeing it on the dinner table, as a child. The elegant goblet was used by my dad's mother. I think the two plates behind them are just ornamental, but that's okay.
Have you ever noticed that on those HGTV shows you never see a china cabinet in the dining room? I guess they are unfashionable now. I love our china cabinet. One day soon I am going to get photos of everything and write down what Mom says about each piece, so one day my children and grandchildren will know where everything came from and who used it 50, 100, 200 years before, and how.
I do not want my grandchildren and other descendants to know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as a wise man once said.
I don't go to estate sales or antique stores very often, but I appreciate that things made a hundred years ago have tended to hold up better than newer things. I don't feel materialistic about my love of these things. I also am practical. If we ever ran out of money and I had to move to a small apartment, I would keep a few things and put the rest in an estate sale. I would hope that anyone who bought the things would love them as much as I do.
