Frugality and Faith

Slo-Poke.  If you tried to bite it, it would pull your teeth out.  Your only choice was to suck on it.  Well, I suppose you could lick it, but the tongue alone was not enough to really work at that hard caramel, to soften it with (ha!  my mouth just started watering) the saliva that did its job so well,  transforming that hard, sticky candy into sweet syrup that could delight every one of the 10,000 taste buds, not only on the tongue, but under it, and on the insides of the cheeks, and on the lips.    

But the best thing about a Slo-Poke was that it lasted for a long time.  The Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate had come from downstate, from Joliet, in 1924 to be exact, to teach the children of St. Mary’s School, and they introduced me, I discovered years later

, to the slush fund.  The good sisters didn’t have budgets for anything, so they found ways of making a few dollars by selling penny candy in the school hall at the beginning of recess.  It was girls who worked the card tables arrayed with candy that literally cost a penny.  Boys could not, I suspect, be trusted, even under the observant smile of the brown-habited sister in charge of the concession.  I can remember licorice shoelaces, cinnamon pennies, and the favorite of the most frugal of us, the bang-for-the-penny prize, colored dots of sugar dripped in perfect geometric rows and columns on narrow strips of paper, like cash register tape.  For a penny or two, you could walk out with what looked like a lot of candy, and by slowly biting off one dot at a time, you could nurse the slowly unwinding tape most of the way through recess. 

There was a small section of one card table that had premium candy, candy that only a few kids could afford - the Doctor’s kids, and the ones whose parents owned the dime store.  They cost a nickel, or even a dime.  I remember one time secreting away a quarter that my Uncle Steve surreptitiously squeezed into my palm, as he did into my brother Dan’s, as we walked to our parents’ car in his driveway on our Sunday visit.  Usually he did that when we were inside the car, when our parents could see the transfer, and thus require that we put it in the piggy bank as soon as we got home.  But this time we had conspired, by look of whispered covenant, to keep the money for ourselves.  In bed that night we decided that Monday’s penny candy sale would be a great way to celebrate our wealth, and we fell asleep trying to recall all the names of the expensive candy, the nickel and dime stuff.

We talked about it all the way to the bus stop, on the half-mile walk along the dusty stone road and all the while waiting for the bus.  When we got on the bus, we reverted to the same kind of secretiveness that we had had in the back seat of our parents’ car, those contraband quarters in hiding in case someone on the bus might know our parents.  I don’t think we paid much attention in our classrooms that morning, and I can almost bring back to mind how hard it was to walk and not run to the school hall that noontime, to meet Dan and walk self-consciously to the penny candy line, passing by the licorice shoestrings and cinnamon pennies and paper tape dots and Mary Janes, all the way to the big candy at the end, the Milky Way candy bars and big Tootsie Rolls and Bazooka Bubble Gum, as big as both fists.  But I already knew what I wanted.  All through recess I nursed that Slo-Poke.  When the bell rang I carefully re-wrapped the most of it that still remained with the stiff wax-coated yellow and brown wrapper and folded it just right and put it in my coat pocket.  All afternoon my eyes kept going to the “cloak room” door, hoping that none of my classmates could get to that treasure, or that Mr. Ralph, the big, silent, apparently benevolent janitor would not detect my guilty pleasure and save me from my secret sin, hidden from my parents as well as my classmates and everybody but my brother Dan.

It lasted all the time Dan and I stood at the bus stop, and all along the ride, and all along the walk home, and there would have even been a bit left when we got home, but I couldn’t take the chance that our mom would find it, so I gingerly juggled that last sticky morsel along the cusps of my teeth and sucked on the syrup until it finally gave up the ghost, its caramel sweetness invisibly coating my mouth and throat by the time I got home, hugged my mom with my nose turned carefully away from her face and holding my sweetened breath until I had run halfway up the stairs to our room.   

You may be wondering if we ever got caught, if my mom found the stiff, wax-coated wrapper in my pants pocket, or the smiling sister reported my purchase.  No, I got away with it.  But while I can write of trust in God, in suing joyfully what we’re given and trusting in God’s care and providence, I make decisions on the same basis of that secret quarter.  What will last the longest?  I confess that frugality is in the marrow of my bones, even as my spirit soars to a gracious God.  The music of my life is played on strings stretched tight between frugality and faith.  I am learning, by God’s grace and the example of good people, to live harmoniously, seeking to play on these strings the kind notes, the loving chords, music as sweet as that long-lasting delicious caramel.