“Mom, could I get some *bobby socks? The girls in my class are wearing them.”
“But, Joy, your anklets are new. I would have been so glad to have new socks during the Depression.”
That’s why I wasn’t very crazy about listening to any of Mom’s stories of those Depression days.
I was one of eleven girls in my junior high class of thirteen kids at the Dexter school. Only two boys. Nearly all of the girls were townies, but I rode the bus home every day. The popular town girls not only wore bobby socks, they also talked about stopping at Isenberg’s for a nickel Cherry Coke on their way home from school, something I felt left out of.
The soda fountain, with stools to sit on while sipping nectar through straws, was in the front of Isenberg’s Drug Store. We also got prescriptions filled there, and took rolls of film to be sent to Des Moines to be developed.
The Dexter Library, across the street from Isenberg’s, was only open on Saturdays and Wednesday afternoons. I must have mentioned hoping to stop for a Cherry Coke some Wednesday, then to the library afterwards.
Farmwives have very busy days, with a man for dinner every noon and sometimes several men, plus keeping a garden and canning, cleaning and washing, sometimes sewing up baby pigs. One time Mom offered to get groceries at Blohm’s on a Wednesday afternoon so that Gloria (two years younger) and I could stop at Isenberg’s for Cokes with the town girls. She’d meet us at the library afterwards. (Blohm’s, owned by Dad’s aunt and uncles, was two doors south of the library.)
What a sweet thing for a mom to do for her daughters. And I eventually got those longed-for bobby socks.
Mom’s memories of growing up poor did make their way into Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression, along with letters back and forth to their “Navy boys” along episodes from Grandma Leora’s memoir.