Money poor

From Grandpa's tapes:

James says he doesn’t think he could sleep nights if he was so poor now as he and Cecelia were for years. He was completely happy but tells how he scraped up $80 and bought her an engagement ring with that. He didn’t have another penny, but by the time they got married he had rounded up $88 and that was enough for a ten day honeymoon. They stayed in the best hotels, ate well, went to the Minnesota fair, and did whatever they wanted. Money went far but when they got home they did not have a dollar in the house and there were hardly any groceries in James’ bachelor house. They rounded up some wedding money to buy staples. Then for the first couple of years they sold Ann Chase some chickens every Saturday for $1.50 and they bought their week’s groceries with that. Of course, they had their own meat, eggs and milk.

James says the world has changed and some of it has rubbed off on him. We have to have so many things and when he looks back on how many things they did without as children and when they were first married, and for several years after, it would bother him today. It did not at the time.

To explain just how money poor he was he told about the spring after Pat was born. Matt and Vete were helping James put up hay. He was using their hay loader which had a rope running between the bars to bring the hay up so it would not fall off. It broke and since he was using their outfit he had to replace the rope. It was going to cost
55c. He went up to the house and told Cecelia that they had to buy the rope and he did not want to tell them he did not have 55c in the bank, a purse or anywhere. Cecelia remember that Fr. McCormick had put 50c in a piggy bank for Pat and someone else had put in a dime. They broke open the bank, got the 60c and went to town and bought 55c worth of rope.