My mother did not shop in thrift stores. She didn't even like to go to K Mart. My mom grew up in real poverty, not enough to eat poverty, cold all winter long poverty. She grew up wearing ragged hand me downs and worn out shoes. She picked cotton for other farmers to earn money for school clothes because her daddy sure wasn't going to pay her for picking cotton at home. When she escaped, she did not look back. She left poverty behind and worked herself to the bone to make sure I didn't know what real poverty was. Money was often tight. Some weeks we ate roast beef, other weeks we ate beans and hammocks, but we never went hungry, ever. My mom wore genteel office lady clothes that she bought from JC Penny's. As someone who grew up dirty, cold, and aching, she loved a hot bath better than anything in the world. She was not flamboyant and didn't want to be the center of attention, but she was funny as hell and could make everyone around her laugh. She was kind in a way that people still remember 15 years after her death.
In 1968 she voted for LBJ and my dad voted for Nixon. I was shocked when she told me. I thought wives had to vote the same as their husbands. She quickly disabused me of that notion. She was humble but fiercely independent. No one was going to tell her what to think. She was the only pro-choice southern Baptist I ever knew.
She would have found the current president repellent.
