May 16, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dennis Peterson's father had an interesting way of saving money. He called it 'Makin' Do'. Dennis tells the story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story from our regular contributor Dennis Peterson. Today, Dennis shares
with us the story of something his father did called
make him do. Here's Dennis.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It surely had something to do with his having grown
up on a farm and during the Great Depression. But
Daddy expressed few desires for things, and he seldom made
impulse purchases. He bought only what he needed. If he
needed it but couldn't buy it, he made it or
did without. He was always looking for the better deal
(00:52):
on what few things he did buy. Daddy hated death.
He had built his own house on his own land.
The only debt he incurred was for the drilling of
a well on his property, something that he was unable
to do himself. He paid his brother in law, my
(01:14):
uncle Dylan, ten dollars a month until the total was
paid off, and he never owed anyone a dime after that. Rather,
Daddy saved money. Actually it was probably mother who saved it,
but Daddy certainly was behind her efforts, never fighting against
her on it. I recall that every time the Knoxville
(01:38):
News Sentinel raised its subscription rate, Daddy threatened to stop
the paper, But Mother always found some way to trim
the household budget, usually through getting better buys on her
grocery purchases, and saved enough to pay the higher rate
and keep getting the paper for years. Home delivery of
the seven day subscription was only fifty cents a week.
(02:00):
But if Daddy needed something, he saved for it, not
making the purchase until he had the cash in hand
to pay for it. That's what he did when buying
a car or a truck. He saved and saved over
a long time. Then when he was approaching the amount
needed for the purchase, he began shopping around for the
(02:21):
best deal. When he thought he had located the vehicle
he wanted, he sat down with the salesman and stated
his terms ninety days same as cash. If the dealer
wouldn't accept those simple terms, Daddy simply got up and
walked out. That's how he bought every car and truck
he ever owned. Daddy was not tempted to exceed the
(02:44):
top amount he had determined to spend by any dealer
add ons, options, or extra features or enticements. He wanted
no luxury features, no radio or air conditioning. When those
features were optional, He did them when they became standard.
His trucks never had radios. They were work trucks. No
(03:07):
wide white sidewalls if it was extra, no fancy hubcaps
or wheels, no more chrome than was standard. And those
were the days before most of the cars were made
of plastic. That he saved more than money. Though he
seldom threw anything away. We might need it someday, he
(03:30):
would offer as a reason for hanging on to something
many a time when I had nothing to do, when
I went to work with him, or on rainy or
cold days when we could not work, he had me
pull nails from scaffold boards that had been nailed together.
After I removed them, he instructed me to straighten them
and store them in a large coffee can or jelly
(03:53):
jar or old wooden box. He might need to reuse
them later. He also had a similar collection of oldest
sorted sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, and rubber gaskets.
Then when a need arose for one of those items,
it would be available. He wouldn't have to run to
the hardware store to buy one. He would, however, spend
(04:15):
an hour or so searching through endless cans and boxes
and other kinds of containers until he found the right
item for his current need. This was all part of
what he called making do. But to make do, you
had to have a ready supply of material and tools
to make do with. That's why he saved not just money,
(04:40):
but everything. But I was impatient. I couldn't understand Daddy's thinking. Daddy,
I sometimes tried to reason with him, You save all
these nuts and bolts and washers and screws to save money,
But then you'll spend an hour or more hunting through
the whole collection trying to find the right way one.
(05:01):
Don't you know that time is money. He couldn't see
it that way. I'd resigned myself to his never changing.
The problem was that it was often my time too.
The place where Daddy's making do concerned me most was
(05:21):
on the job site. He sometimes improvised in ways that
clearly were unsafe to himself, me and other workers. For example,
when I was so young that I could carry a
maximum of only three bricks at a time, I was
working with Daddy on a house that on the upper
end was one story tall, but on the lower end
(05:42):
was three stories. The pile of used bricks that had
been dumped on the upper end, meant that I had
to transfer them as needed on the scaffold all the
way to the other end of the house. Daddy rigged
a two by ten walk board running from the brick
pile to the uppermost scaffold. I was to carry my
three bricks up that board and along the scaffold walkway
(06:05):
to the other end of the house. My problem was
that with both of my hands on the bricks, I
had no way of balancing myself on the walkboard. I
would fall off. Listening to my complaint, Daddy conceded and
agreed to put a handrail on one side of the walkboard.
(06:26):
That sounded to me like a safer solution to the problem.
But after he added the rail and I tried it out,
I discovered that the rail made the walk space on
the board even narrower, forcing me to walk toward one
side of the board. Daddy insisted, however, that it was safe.
I tried to make it work and promptly fell off
(06:48):
the side without the rail and into the pile of
bricks below. Daddy's making do once just about did him
in too. He was working high on the scaffold in
the gable end of a house. He used two walkboards
nailed together with sixteen penny nails to span the central
(07:10):
part of the scaffold. Is that safe, I asked, with
genuine concern. Of course it's safe, he responded, sounding a
bit hurt by my doubts. I built it, didn't I.
He walked across it once and then recrossed it, bouncing
up and down on it a little to demonstrate his point.
Over the course of the day, however, his repeated walking
(07:33):
and bouncing across the gap caused the nails to begin
working loose. Near the end of the day, the boards
suddenly separated as Daddy walked across them and down he
fell about twenty feet into a wheelbarrow of freshly mixed mortar.
Other than a skinned shin and a bruised ego. He
(07:55):
was uninjured, but what would have been the result of
that fall had that barrel of mortar not been there
to cushion the fall. On another occasion, when Daddy made do,
he nearly burned our house down. We had been having
some trouble with our water heater, not being able to
meet the demands of a family of six. One Saturday,
(08:18):
we asked Daddy to look at it and see what
the problem was. Upon examining it, he determined that one
element had burned out, but he thought that he could
jury rig it so that it would still produce heat.
I don't understand electrical appliances enough to know exactly what
he did, but I think he somehow bypassed something and
(08:39):
rewired some other thing and it worked. Problem solved, or
so we thought. On Monday afternoon, we drove into the
garage when we got home from work, and for some
odd reason I happened to look toward the opposite side
of the garage where our water heater was. I saw
(09:00):
on one side of it blackened from bottom to top.
My eyes followed the direction of the rising soot stain
to the ceiling joys. They were charred, and the insulation
between the joys was blackened. Fortunately, the fire caused the
circuit breaker to do its job, cutting off the power
(09:20):
and preventing further damage. That's what can come from making do.
But Daddy remained a make do man all his life.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And a great work is always by Monty Montgomery and
a special thanks to Dennis Peterson, and you can go
to Dennis Lpeterson dot com to hear more of his stories,
the upsides and the downsides of having a making do
kind of dad or mom or anyone around you. And
I've had enough them around me in my life. And
sometimes they're a joy, and sometimes they'll kill you. The
(09:56):
story of Dennis Peterson's dad. So many dads around this
country like him. Here on our American Story
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story from our regular contributor Dennis Peterson. Today, Dennis shares
with us the story of something his father did called
make him do. Here's Dennis.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It surely had something to do with his having grown
up on a farm and during the Great Depression. But
Daddy expressed few desires for things, and he seldom made
impulse purchases. He bought only what he needed. If he
needed it but couldn't buy it, he made it or
did without. He was always looking for the better deal
(00:52):
on what few things he did buy. Daddy hated death.
He had built his own house on his own land.
The only debt he incurred was for the drilling of
a well on his property, something that he was unable
to do himself. He paid his brother in law, my
(01:14):
uncle Dylan, ten dollars a month until the total was
paid off, and he never owed anyone a dime after that. Rather,
Daddy saved money. Actually it was probably mother who saved it,
but Daddy certainly was behind her efforts, never fighting against
her on it. I recall that every time the Knoxville
(01:38):
News Sentinel raised its subscription rate, Daddy threatened to stop
the paper, But Mother always found some way to trim
the household budget, usually through getting better buys on her
grocery purchases, and saved enough to pay the higher rate
and keep getting the paper for years. Home delivery of
the seven day subscription was only fifty cents a week.
(02:00):
But if Daddy needed something, he saved for it, not
making the purchase until he had the cash in hand
to pay for it. That's what he did when buying
a car or a truck. He saved and saved over
a long time. Then when he was approaching the amount
needed for the purchase, he began shopping around for the
(02:21):
best deal. When he thought he had located the vehicle
he wanted, he sat down with the salesman and stated
his terms ninety days same as cash. If the dealer
wouldn't accept those simple terms, Daddy simply got up and
walked out. That's how he bought every car and truck
he ever owned. Daddy was not tempted to exceed the
(02:44):
top amount he had determined to spend by any dealer
add ons, options, or extra features or enticements. He wanted
no luxury features, no radio or air conditioning. When those
features were optional, He did them when they became standard.
His trucks never had radios. They were work trucks. No
(03:07):
wide white sidewalls if it was extra, no fancy hubcaps
or wheels, no more chrome than was standard. And those
were the days before most of the cars were made
of plastic. That he saved more than money. Though he
seldom threw anything away. We might need it someday, he
(03:30):
would offer as a reason for hanging on to something
many a time when I had nothing to do, when
I went to work with him, or on rainy or
cold days when we could not work, he had me
pull nails from scaffold boards that had been nailed together.
After I removed them, he instructed me to straighten them
and store them in a large coffee can or jelly
(03:53):
jar or old wooden box. He might need to reuse
them later. He also had a similar collection of oldest
sorted sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, and rubber gaskets.
Then when a need arose for one of those items,
it would be available. He wouldn't have to run to
the hardware store to buy one. He would, however, spend
(04:15):
an hour or so searching through endless cans and boxes
and other kinds of containers until he found the right
item for his current need. This was all part of
what he called making do. But to make do, you
had to have a ready supply of material and tools
to make do with. That's why he saved not just money,
(04:40):
but everything. But I was impatient. I couldn't understand Daddy's thinking. Daddy,
I sometimes tried to reason with him, You save all
these nuts and bolts and washers and screws to save money,
But then you'll spend an hour or more hunting through
the whole collection trying to find the right way one.
(05:01):
Don't you know that time is money. He couldn't see
it that way. I'd resigned myself to his never changing.
The problem was that it was often my time too.
The place where Daddy's making do concerned me most was
(05:21):
on the job site. He sometimes improvised in ways that
clearly were unsafe to himself, me and other workers. For example,
when I was so young that I could carry a
maximum of only three bricks at a time, I was
working with Daddy on a house that on the upper
end was one story tall, but on the lower end
(05:42):
was three stories. The pile of used bricks that had
been dumped on the upper end, meant that I had
to transfer them as needed on the scaffold all the
way to the other end of the house. Daddy rigged
a two by ten walk board running from the brick
pile to the uppermost scaffold. I was to carry my
three bricks up that board and along the scaffold walkway
(06:05):
to the other end of the house. My problem was
that with both of my hands on the bricks, I
had no way of balancing myself on the walkboard. I
would fall off. Listening to my complaint, Daddy conceded and
agreed to put a handrail on one side of the walkboard.
(06:26):
That sounded to me like a safer solution to the problem.
But after he added the rail and I tried it out,
I discovered that the rail made the walk space on
the board even narrower, forcing me to walk toward one
side of the board. Daddy insisted, however, that it was safe.
I tried to make it work and promptly fell off
(06:48):
the side without the rail and into the pile of
bricks below. Daddy's making do once just about did him
in too. He was working high on the scaffold in
the gable end of a house. He used two walkboards
nailed together with sixteen penny nails to span the central
(07:10):
part of the scaffold. Is that safe, I asked, with
genuine concern. Of course it's safe, he responded, sounding a
bit hurt by my doubts. I built it, didn't I.
He walked across it once and then recrossed it, bouncing
up and down on it a little to demonstrate his point.
Over the course of the day, however, his repeated walking
(07:33):
and bouncing across the gap caused the nails to begin
working loose. Near the end of the day, the boards
suddenly separated as Daddy walked across them and down he
fell about twenty feet into a wheelbarrow of freshly mixed mortar.
Other than a skinned shin and a bruised ego. He
(07:55):
was uninjured, but what would have been the result of
that fall had that barrel of mortar not been there
to cushion the fall. On another occasion, when Daddy made do,
he nearly burned our house down. We had been having
some trouble with our water heater, not being able to
meet the demands of a family of six. One Saturday,
(08:18):
we asked Daddy to look at it and see what
the problem was. Upon examining it, he determined that one
element had burned out, but he thought that he could
jury rig it so that it would still produce heat.
I don't understand electrical appliances enough to know exactly what
he did, but I think he somehow bypassed something and
(08:39):
rewired some other thing and it worked. Problem solved, or
so we thought. On Monday afternoon, we drove into the
garage when we got home from work, and for some
odd reason I happened to look toward the opposite side
of the garage where our water heater was. I saw
(09:00):
on one side of it blackened from bottom to top.
My eyes followed the direction of the rising soot stain
to the ceiling joys. They were charred, and the insulation
between the joys was blackened. Fortunately, the fire caused the
circuit breaker to do its job, cutting off the power
(09:20):
and preventing further damage. That's what can come from making do.
But Daddy remained a make do man all his life.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And a great work is always by Monty Montgomery and
a special thanks to Dennis Peterson, and you can go
to Dennis Lpeterson dot com to hear more of his stories,
the upsides and the downsides of having a making do
kind of dad or mom or anyone around you. And
I've had enough them around me in my life. And
sometimes they're a joy, and sometimes they'll kill you. The
(09:56):
story of Dennis Peterson's dad. So many dads around this
country like him. Here on our American Story
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