Sunday, October 10, 2004
There will arise a generation that will know not the meaning of "blue light special."
Sadly, this prophecy from the Book of Carlus has come true. Many of those currently in college are too young to know the joys of the K-Mart blue light special. This is due to K-Mart's 10 year decline from department store superpower to "one step away from a Dollar General." This partly due to the slick reimaging and advertising of Target, and the cut-throat business practices of the pseudo-Soviet Wal-Mart.
But in the 80's, K-Mart was a pretty cool place. They had everything. And every so often, you would hear an underpaid teenage clerk announce "Attention K-Mart shoppers, there is a blue-light special in isle 9." And sure enough, a blue police-car-style light would be franticly spinning and shining on a rollaway fixture, parked next to isle 9. In isle 9 there would be a huge display of some overstocked, high margin item, and it would be priced "redonkulously" low. : ) You'd never know where, when, or what the next special would be... It was the sort of campy, needless drama that department stores used to use to draw customers in.
I bring up the blue light special because it reminds me of one of the first lessons I remember truly learning from my father. My father is a farm-boy philosopher: he never finished high school, he instead went to Vietnam to serve as a soldier during the war, and he somewhere along the line earned his G.E.D. College was never even an option to my dad, and because of it he has had to work very hard to earn a living for his family. He never had much use for the white-collar world or high society in general. My dad sees much of today's products and past-times as luxuries (amazing, considering we live in a time when convenience, entitlement and affluency are running out of control).
On one particular day, when I was probably about 10 or 12 years old, the K-Mart special was on a small plastic box. It had a lid that sort of fit down over the top, and inside had thin plastic veins that ran down the sides, spaced just far enough away that a cassette tape would fit upright between them. It cold hold, or "organize," twelve of your most prized cassettes (another item that the new generation is in danger of forgetting about). The box itself was made of the cheapest plastic (hard and brittle), and its value truly was next to zero.
But at the time, I really wanted to buy it. I begged and pleaded with my dad, who was very patient but getting aggravated. The answer was "no." My reply was "why?" Where was I going to put my Huey Lewis, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Twisted Sister, Prince, Men at Work, Michael Jackson, Run DMC, Police, and Weird Al tapes?
An important side note here is to remind all of you that when you were young, you assumed your parents always had a lots of disposable income. This was, for most of us, and serious overstatement. My parents were broke, and in and out of the proverbial "hole." So an expenditure on such a useless item was obviously a bad idea to him. But he never said anything alluding to being broke.
What he did say to me is something that you'd never carve into stone, but it has stuck with me my entire life. "You could keep your cassettes in a shoe box and save the money for something else. It would work just as good." And it would and it did.
My dad never bought into the theory that items had one purpose. You do not need a DVD rack for DVDs. You do not need an Ikea magazine crate to store old magazines. You don't need a banana hanger, bookmark, toothbrush holder, piggy bank, or a special utensil for grapefruit. My dad was the embodiment of bare-bones resourcefulness.
Of course, this meant years of not wearing "cool" clothes, wearing uncomfortable Wrangler jeans, PayLess shoes (same shoes for school, softball, track, and church). If the sole of your cheap shoes came loose (flip-flop-flip), a little Black Max glue would make it all right. Discarded 5 gallon buckets became tool boxes, sorting bins, step stools, and make-shift swimming pools (well, water fun dispensing units anyway).
We saved and reused tons of "throw-away junk." Empty peanut butter jars, juice jugs, plastic grocery sacks, cardboard boxes, discarded lumber, and coffee cans. My mother never bought color-coordinated tumblers for drinking out of; instead our cabinet was filled with cups from gas stations, fast food restaurants, and state fair concession stands. If the truth was known, I bet that he is physically sickened by the idea of buying some state-of-the-art coffin when there are refrigerator boxes just lying there in Tru-Value's dumpster...
Because of my dad's direction, I have always had ingenuity and imagination. I used discarded cardboard, construction paper, glue, and markers to make elaborate playsets for my action figures and toy cars. I turned metal pipes, bricks, and lumber into forts. I used milkcrates for entertainment centers, and cardboard boxes for, well, just about everything. In my own clumsy way, I still try to fix items before throwing them away and replacing them. You'd be amazed at what you can reuse; or use as cleaner, storage units, adhesive, funnels, and so on...
While the practice of using "junk" for functional items can get out of hand (I once used trashbags as luggage in college), it is a great lesson to learn. We shouldn't get too obsessed with consuming that we chase after needless and useless items. It is something that I always stop and consider (although sometimes I choose ignore it).
Thanks dad! It isn't being cheap, it's being resourceful. It's being smart, and being a good steward.
See ya!
But in the 80's, K-Mart was a pretty cool place. They had everything. And every so often, you would hear an underpaid teenage clerk announce "Attention K-Mart shoppers, there is a blue-light special in isle 9." And sure enough, a blue police-car-style light would be franticly spinning and shining on a rollaway fixture, parked next to isle 9. In isle 9 there would be a huge display of some overstocked, high margin item, and it would be priced "redonkulously" low. : ) You'd never know where, when, or what the next special would be... It was the sort of campy, needless drama that department stores used to use to draw customers in.
I bring up the blue light special because it reminds me of one of the first lessons I remember truly learning from my father. My father is a farm-boy philosopher: he never finished high school, he instead went to Vietnam to serve as a soldier during the war, and he somewhere along the line earned his G.E.D. College was never even an option to my dad, and because of it he has had to work very hard to earn a living for his family. He never had much use for the white-collar world or high society in general. My dad sees much of today's products and past-times as luxuries (amazing, considering we live in a time when convenience, entitlement and affluency are running out of control).
On one particular day, when I was probably about 10 or 12 years old, the K-Mart special was on a small plastic box. It had a lid that sort of fit down over the top, and inside had thin plastic veins that ran down the sides, spaced just far enough away that a cassette tape would fit upright between them. It cold hold, or "organize," twelve of your most prized cassettes (another item that the new generation is in danger of forgetting about). The box itself was made of the cheapest plastic (hard and brittle), and its value truly was next to zero.
But at the time, I really wanted to buy it. I begged and pleaded with my dad, who was very patient but getting aggravated. The answer was "no." My reply was "why?" Where was I going to put my Huey Lewis, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Twisted Sister, Prince, Men at Work, Michael Jackson, Run DMC, Police, and Weird Al tapes?
An important side note here is to remind all of you that when you were young, you assumed your parents always had a lots of disposable income. This was, for most of us, and serious overstatement. My parents were broke, and in and out of the proverbial "hole." So an expenditure on such a useless item was obviously a bad idea to him. But he never said anything alluding to being broke.
What he did say to me is something that you'd never carve into stone, but it has stuck with me my entire life. "You could keep your cassettes in a shoe box and save the money for something else. It would work just as good." And it would and it did.
My dad never bought into the theory that items had one purpose. You do not need a DVD rack for DVDs. You do not need an Ikea magazine crate to store old magazines. You don't need a banana hanger, bookmark, toothbrush holder, piggy bank, or a special utensil for grapefruit. My dad was the embodiment of bare-bones resourcefulness.
Of course, this meant years of not wearing "cool" clothes, wearing uncomfortable Wrangler jeans, PayLess shoes (same shoes for school, softball, track, and church). If the sole of your cheap shoes came loose (flip-flop-flip), a little Black Max glue would make it all right. Discarded 5 gallon buckets became tool boxes, sorting bins, step stools, and make-shift swimming pools (well, water fun dispensing units anyway).
We saved and reused tons of "throw-away junk." Empty peanut butter jars, juice jugs, plastic grocery sacks, cardboard boxes, discarded lumber, and coffee cans. My mother never bought color-coordinated tumblers for drinking out of; instead our cabinet was filled with cups from gas stations, fast food restaurants, and state fair concession stands. If the truth was known, I bet that he is physically sickened by the idea of buying some state-of-the-art coffin when there are refrigerator boxes just lying there in Tru-Value's dumpster...
Because of my dad's direction, I have always had ingenuity and imagination. I used discarded cardboard, construction paper, glue, and markers to make elaborate playsets for my action figures and toy cars. I turned metal pipes, bricks, and lumber into forts. I used milkcrates for entertainment centers, and cardboard boxes for, well, just about everything. In my own clumsy way, I still try to fix items before throwing them away and replacing them. You'd be amazed at what you can reuse; or use as cleaner, storage units, adhesive, funnels, and so on...
While the practice of using "junk" for functional items can get out of hand (I once used trashbags as luggage in college), it is a great lesson to learn. We shouldn't get too obsessed with consuming that we chase after needless and useless items. It is something that I always stop and consider (although sometimes I choose ignore it).
Thanks dad! It isn't being cheap, it's being resourceful. It's being smart, and being a good steward.
See ya!
Comments:
Hey Carl,
I got your comment on my blog, I love when new people stop by so I thought I would come and check yours out.
Sounds great, good to know you had such a close relationship with your Dad, and that you have come to accept the way he chooses to live.
Ashley
Post a Comment
I got your comment on my blog, I love when new people stop by so I thought I would come and check yours out.
Sounds great, good to know you had such a close relationship with your Dad, and that you have come to accept the way he chooses to live.
Ashley