On thrift stores, books, and Phantoms

Thrift store

DEFINITION: A non-profit or for-profit retail establishment selling previously owned, second-hand items ranging from clothes, housewares, appliances, books, electronics, and miscellanea. Donations to thrift stores are usually tax-deductible. Here Wikipedia's international description of a thrift store, also known as a charity shop.

The thrift store was always an exciting place to go growing up. We didn’t have a lot of money, so every couple of months, we’d hit the local thrift store for clothing and other supplies. This is a picture of the thrift store I remember the most. It’s the RAD Thrift Store, located at 215 West Main Street, Santa Maria, California.

There is a smell to thrift stores (at least all the thrift stores that I have ever visited). It smells like body odor, mildew, disinfectant, perhaps ages of perfumes, cigarette smoke, dank attics, danker basements, and lastly, I suppose it smells like poverty. I can remember running through the aisles of this thrift store with my siblings and playing with the toys for sale. My mother was always looking at the clothes and linens. After an indeterminate amount of time, she would call out and all four of us would make our way to the cashier’s stand.

We always wore what my mother chose, and I can’t remember ever hating anything she made me wear. In fact, the only clothes I truly hated were brand new ruffle dresses with poofy sleeves. There was nothing inherently wrong with them, except I would have to wear them to school with little shiny shoes while the other girls had tennis shoes and sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt. When I was a bit older, I remember buying old dresses to cut up and make into skirts from this very thrift store.

As an adult, I have gone to the thrift store for many reasons. As I have two boys roughly the same build and height and who are growing quickly, I find I need to constantly buy clothes that fit them. It is cost-prohibitive to buy them new clothes all the time, but I can go the thrift store and buy them five or six pairs of jeans for under $20. I have also gone for cheap and sometimes very interesting artwork to decorate my home with. But most importantly, I go to thrift stores to buy inexpensive books.

Going to the local thrift store to pick out my latest batch of used books is always exciting. The pleasure I get from looking at the worn and not-so-worn spines is only topped by actually picking the books and getting to read them. During my last visit, I found a few gems: Tolkein’s The Hobbit and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. I also picked a rather meaty, but altogether random romance novel, a suspense novel and Dean Koontz’s Phantoms.

I loved Phantoms. Not because it is extremely well-written or impressed me terribly. It is classically Koontz. What I loved about this book was the previous owner’s notes. On several of the book’s pages, the previous owner had written her impressions, predictions, sarcastic comments, and references to other books. At least I think it is a woman from the handwriting, but I cannot be sure. Where else could I have picked up such a book if not from the thrift store? I can’t decide whether I will follow this woman’s example and mark up my books with my thoughts. There is an ingrained distaste for defacing books. But I will think about it.

TheThriftShopper.com is an excellent resource on thrift store shopping.

Thornburg

I had every step of Thornburg memorized from my house on Alvin all the way past Fesler, down to Cypress. I'd go down this street to go to junior high, to church, to my beloved library. I'd fallen on it (and scraped my knee pretty badly), hit a truck while riding my bike, gazed at cute, unattainable neighbor boys, and made friends with its inhabitants. As I grew older, Thornburg was where I strolled with my first love and where he stole his first kiss on my cheek. It was a street that featured in my dreams and nightmares long after I moved away from my hometown. And though I wasn't much of an adventurer, this was a street that I could travel with complete ease because I knew what was around every corner.

But this post isn't necessarily about Thornburg. Thornburg was the way that I went to another hallowed part of my child hood: Veteran's Memorial Park. I have a lot of stories to say about that place from my childhood to my teenage days. When I was 5, my brother broke a bottle over my head there; I discovered that I had not invented the word carnation inside the Veteran's Memorial Hall; and later on, I made out with my boyfriend behind the bushes at the back of the hall. But this is more about the playground at the park.

Veteran's Memorial Park had a sand playground in the shape of a large oval. The playground had a merry-go-ring, a slide shaped like a rocket, balancing rails, and monkey bars. I would hold my breath every time as I rounded the corner on El Camino, wondering if I would see children playing at the park. This thrill of anticipation was sometimes too much to bear. When I would see them, I would get so happy. They were usually kids I didn't know, so there was no fear that they would think I was strange or reject me. I was the most outgoing child you could imagine on these days. I don't remember a single name of the children I played with on those days. But they validated my existence. They made me feel like in an alternate reality, I could be a normal person and have friends just like everyone else. Their happiness in my presence was as narcissistic as any mirror, but more innocent than that. THEY were my first social experiments, and for that I write about them and thank these anonymous beings.

Having friends now reminded me of those days, and about the park, and about Thornburg. I looked up the area on Google Maps and realized that I had so much history within one square mile of this area. My cousin and best friend Evelyn lived on Lincoln, the next street parallel to Thornburg on the east. My friend Terry Villapondo lived three houses down from her, and I once lived in an apartment on El Camino and Lincoln with my stepdad Bill, mom, and siblings. Parallel to Lincoln on the east was Broadway, where I got hit by a car when I was 5, which is also where Bill's Takeout was (best fries ever).

For now, the reminiscing ends.

Everyone Needs to Eat -- Entry for January 29, 2008

My siblings and I grew up in relative poverty. We often moved with our parents to various migrant camps and housing so they could pick whatever vegetable or fruit was ready for harvesting. We lived in places that had outhouses and no indoor plumbing, and others that were miles from the nearest city. It would be easy for me to romanticize this period of my life, but it was not romantic. It was hard. We finally stopped moving when I was in 3rd grade.

Despite our limited means, we rarely knew hunger. My mother is a very resourceful woman. While we were migrants, we had the fields of vegetables to eat,and when we lived in rural places like the northern border of Washington state, my stepfather would hunt for live game. When we settled down in Santa Maria, CA, my mother changed tactics. When we did not have enough money to buy groceries, we would wake up before dawn to search for cans. I can remember those mornings and her starting up the Ford Ranchero so clearly. There is a different feeling to a house before dawn. We would pile into the truck and hit all the major dumpsters in our neighborhood and beyond. To the Lucky's Supermarket (now a discount mall), to the empty lot behind Wimpy's Liquor and across the street from Taco Bell, to the dumpsters near my classmate Theresa V.'s house. Sometimes my mother would stand in the dumpster and throw cans out to us that we would crush and toss in the back of the truck, other times we would all root around in the trash to find them.

My feelings about the enterprise were always mixed and volatile. I hated doing it. I was so afraid that someone I knew would see us and thus plunge my already absimal schoolyard status even lower. I would not only be the stuttering, loner, nerd, but the stuttering, loner, nerd who digs through other peoples' trash. But I was also proud of my mother. We would fill the back of the truck and get $30 to 40 dollars for our efforts -- enough to buy staples like rice, beans, and flour to make tortillas. We always had full dinners.

So when I read this article about the poor in Haiti, I remembered my mother, digging for cans, and growing up poor. There was no comparison. The very poor in Haiti eat a mud cookie made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening. So many eat these "cookies" 3 times a day. I have never been this poor. My children will never be this poor. I want to help so bad. I wish I could send my food over there to help the girl Charlene in the article. They cannot go and collect cans like we did.

Please visit this The Hunger Site and click on the Big "CLICK TO GIVE" icon, or the link following my blog. Sponsors of the site donate the equivalent of 1 cup of food for each click. Add it to your favorites and when you are bored, sit there clicking for a few minutes. It will help so many people. If you want some alarming statistics on how much food is wasted in North America and Europe, visit stopthehunger.com, with the references included.