When I started compiling word pictures of my childhood memories, I realized they were like the mailboxes along the roads and the old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds that served as landmarks in rural Montana.
These landmarks told us where we were and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home” and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.
Money, what little we ever saw, seemed to have an inoffensive presence in everyday life on the farm in the fifties. This was not a laissez-faire attitude as much as it was a chosen
perspective that had both strength and history.
We appreciated what we had and didn’t think much about what we didn’t have. There was never any connection that I can recall between the amount of money available and the quality of life in our home.
Our Dad specifically trusted God, but he also had an earthy sense of humor about money that was sometimes expressed as “Money isn’t the first thing in life but it’s sure ahead of whatever’s in second place.” (more…)