We know we learn some from watching our parents or adults we grew up around, like osmosis in action. Some characteristics are genetic, I’m sure, but it’s those "other" ones that drive me crazy. Like "saving stuff." I’m crazy about saving anything and every-thing, just because.

Boxes. I have boxes inside boxes in my attic. My son Bill gave me a bottle of Channel No. 5. I didn’t let me wear any of it for the first year or two … I was saving it. Then one day recently, I opened the box to check on the perfume and half of it had evaporated! So, I have allowed me to use a little of it, but not too much … I’m saving it.

I have eight-track tapes I’m saving. Elvis Presley set, never opened, but I’ll continue to save them. And, up in one of my closets I am saving an eight-track player on which to play them if I ever allow me to. I have a pickup load of stuff . Do we all? Probably. In our storeroom alone I have boxes of stuff we packed up when we moved back to South Dakota in 1978. That’s how bad we needed the stuff.

I have minutes from board meetings, all of the papers listing goals ands achievements of the Oacoma Centennial celebration and the Oacoma Planning Board. In barrel bags tied with old nylons you will find newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s. My Aunt Victoria Stallman saved them so how dare I throw them away?

I have clothes from ot six; the thread that holds them  together has to be rotten! There are clothes that still have the tags on; recipes cut out and saved and of course will never be used; butter tubs in the freezer full of cherry chips, dates, prunes, etc., ca 1985; a funnel cake mix I bought at the state fair in 1990. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE??? I DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!

Talking about saving things. I was at Victoria’s house one day and she was using this paring knife that was shaped like a boomerang and as thin as a piece of paper (from 50 years of use.) I was so interested in it that she told me it was "Ma’s" and went on to say she (Victoria) had one, too, and she got it out of the drawer … still in the box it came in! I asked why she wasn’t using it and she said simply, "Because Ma’s isn’t worn out yet."  Grandma Stallman bought hers the winter of 1920 from a traveling salesman. Victoria liked it so well that when he came back through in 1921, Victoria bought herself one. I still have the knife … I’m saving it.

How does the old adage go … "Use it up, wear it out; make it do or go without".