Frugal Skin Care

Here are some tips I have learned over the years. There are frugal ways that I care for my skin. My kids say I’m cheap, but I do watch my pennies. I pinch them and on occasion I do make Abe Lincoln cry. These thoughts dawned on me as I shaved and showered this morning. Standing at my bathroom mirror, I see the healing scar on my chest from my open heart surgery and think, “I almost have the look of a super-hero with the emblem of lightning on his chest.” Then I smile and begin my ablutions. I first brush my teeth using hot water. Then the water is hot enough to splash on my face in preparation for my shave. I shake the can of shaving cream, squirting out a small amount, then with my fingertips, I smear a light coating of cream over my whisker stubble. I’ve learned that a small amount lubricates as well as the mounds shown on shaving cream or blade razor commercials. There’s no need to send money down the drain. I don’t rinse my face, because I step directly into the shower. While the water from the tap warms, I lean over and wet my hair, pour on shampoo, and lather up, rinsing under the showerhead only after the water becomes warm. I gauge by how much lather I produce when it’s time for a haircut. Because I try to use the same amount each time and my hair doesn’t lather well, it’s time.

A washcloth and a bit of Dermasil soap to wash my neck, then the rinsed cloth cleans my face and ears. Soap hasn’t caused my face to dry in years. I learned to use the nylon netting scrungie and body wash soap for the rest of me (And there’s more than enough to scrub.) When my daughters lived at home, they used scrungies, explaining that the body wash with the mesh scrub doesn’t leave a ring in the tub or shower. That’s another way for me to save time and energy. All rinsed off, I reach for the towel. It’s not the fluffy towels seen on television, suffocated in perfumed softeners, but a towel dried in the sunshine and wind on a clothes line. Fabric softener is nothing but liquefied wax and waxy clothes don’t absorb water. I prefer the fragrance of air dried linens better anyway. Solar and wind power just adds to the energy saving benefits. Bending and reaching to hang becomes exercise for my muscles. My daughters hated the stiff air-dried towels. They call my roughened towels, sandpaper…Sandpaper, I just call it exfoliation. It becomes another of my inexpensive dermatologic beauty treatments.

 

Sweet and Sour

I’ve been helping to can produce from a friend’s garden of green beans, tomatoes, corn, and peppers, she also has heads of cabbage that she’s started to make sauerkraut. Homemade sauerkraut has a completely different taste than the cans kraut that fill shelves in the local grocery. It’s less sour with the cabbage flavor more prevalent. Her making sauerkraut stirred several memories that caused me to recall my father-in-law’s yearly making of “kraut.” Bud Morrison and his wife Retha Johnson Morrison grew cabbages in their garden along with other vegetables. He would use an antique mandoline cabbage slicer to shred the heads. A mandoline is a wooden board with a sharp metal blade embedded in the surface that slices the cabbage as the head is pushed down the board. The shredded cabbage would then be packed into a large ceramic crock, then Bud would pour in enough saline brine to cover the strips of raw cabbage. He would cover it with a clean cloth to protect it from dust and insects. An old dinner plate and a heavy rock would press down on the cabbage. The rock itself was unusual. It looked like pale sandstone with small smooth, quartz-looking pebbles embedded in it. As the cabbage fermented, it would make its own broth and frothy bubbles would escape. He’d allow the cabbage to ferment for a week to two weeks before placing the kraut into jars and “cold packing” it.

My second kraut story involves my wife Cindy Morrison Beck’s schoolmate and best friend with her family. I’m just using her initials; D. D. and her husband had three children. Their family was the same size as my wife Cindy and me. We would spend many Christmas and New Year celebrations, together visiting each other’s homes. D. D. slowly began to conform her cooking food to the way her husband’s mother’s recipes. Eventually, there wasn’t a sour thing on her table. She added sugar to the mashed potatoes as well as to any kind of chip or pretzel dip. It was so sweet; it could have been used as a topping for a fruit salad. Here’s where the “UN-sauerkraut” enters the story. Western Pennsylvania tradition requires pork and sauerkraut to be eaten for the New Year’s celebration. It is supposed to bring “good luck.” When we shared a meal with D. D. with her as hostess, the “sauerkraut” was brown from the brown sugar she added. There was no sour taste left in the sauerkraut to be eaten with the sugar laden mashed potatoes. D. D. is a good cook, but the sweet notes in her meals were a little bit fortissimo.

 

In a Jam

I can remember there were times in the summer when my parents Carl and Sybil Miner Beck would drive us to a large field near Camp Wildwood to pick the wild strawberries. These berries weren’t the large ones sold in stores. Mom called them tame berries. The wild strawberries were much smaller. Most were about pea-sized, but occasionally we would find one that was the size of a fingernail. Wild berries grew in clusters of maybe four to six berries on a stem that reminded me of the ribs of an umbrella. Picking them in the field was only the beginning for us. Once the pails of berries were brought home, the berries needed to be separated from the stems, then the green-leafed caps had to be removed from each berry, often leaving fingers stained bright red. Mom would add sugar to the “cleaned” strawberries to wait until she either decided to make jam from them or if she wanted to make strawberry shortcake. The wild strawberries were less sweet than the tame ones, but the wild strawberry flavor is much more intense. The shortcake Mom would make wasn’t the sweet yellow sponge cake like what is sold in the grocery stores today, but it was more like a biscuit. The biscuit always needed the syrup from the sugar and the macerated berries to moisten it. Mom would also make jelly from the berries, cooking them until they thickened with the added Sure-Gel before she ladled into jars, sealing them with a layer of paraffin.

Another jam Mom would make was Concord grape. It was easier for us to gather the clusters of purple orbs. The bunches of grapes were more easily seen, hanging on vines. We didn’t have to search for them like the wild strawberries in the tall grass. Sometimes Mom would preserve Mason jars of grape juice, but most often she would make jelly. After the grapes were removed from the stems, they were washed, cooked, and pressed through a colander-type mortar and pestle to remove the skins and seeds. The pulp was again cooked and Sure-Gel added before the jelly was ladled into jars and sealed. That was our choices of jelly all winter. I believe I can remember someone gave us peaches and we had a fourth choice: Strawberry, Grape, peach, of none at all. Once I was out and on my own, I bought other types of jelly, jam, or marmalade, but no strawberry or grape. For the longest time my desire for eating other flavors outweighed my feelings of nostalgia and the taste of home.

 

Really Officer

Thursday, I had my yearly eye examination done. As a diabetic, it is a routine medical procedure that my PCP requests that I get done. Even though I usually don’t have a big change in my vision, it is a relief when the optometrist says there is no change in my early stages of cataracts and that I don’t have glaucoma or macular degeneration. Near the end of my examination, she places several drops of solution into my eyes. The drops dilate my pupils so that she can do a thorough examination of the inside of my eyes. The test allows a search for abnormalities or for any blood within the eyeball itself. Because the pupil is dilated, the person is more sensitive to light and should wait until the medication has worn off before going outside into the sunlight or attempts to drive a car.

I had things to do, so after a short delay, I hurried out to my car and drove off. I hadd the foresight to have a pair of sunglasses to wear to shield myself from the worst of the sun’s glare. I teased when I arrived at my friend’s house, that I had been driving under the influence…of eye drops, then I thought, “What if a policeman had actually pulled me over for some minor traffic violation and asked me to step out of my car? What if he checked my pupils and found them dilated? Would the officer have thought I was a drug addict?” Me, a teetotaler and a person that takes only prescribed medications. Me, a person who prefers to have my dental work done without Novacaine, because I prefer enduring a bit of minor pain rather than to have my lip numb and in my lap for several hours. The drive from Mt. Pleasant to my home near White Pennsylvania isn’t far, but a lot can happen in those few short miles.

When I was a kid, it seemed that my dad, Carl Beck would tell us of wreck on the Three Mile Hill along Route 31, weekly. After I got my driver’s license, it took me several months of driving before I actually navigated that part of Rt. 31. Things have improved. But there are still too many accidents along that portion of the roadway from the its top to Laurelville at the bottom, even with the runaway truck ramp. I can recall Dad sharing what the wrecked trucks had as their loads: toilet paper, meat, beer, and even livestock had been scattered. I remember reading about a truck that had been hauling dynamite that wrecked, not exploded, but that the driver had been killed.

 

Socks

Carl Beck my dad, used to say he was built backwards, his nose ran and his feet smelled. Sometimes with some people, it was like that. As a nurse, there were some ripe odors when I had to remove shoes. In a small exam room, I had a guy remove his shoe and immediately, the room filled with the most obnoxious sour smell. I was glad that I didn’t need to remain in the room for very long and turned the young man over to the physician for examination.

We had an elderly recluse come into the emergency department. It was necessary to undress him because he hadn’t been caring for himself and was in poor condition. When we pulled off his high-top black brogans we could see his fet were wet and his black socks were wet and clung to his feet and ankles like a second skin. We had to use extreme care removing his socks so we wouldn’t tear his macerated skin. As we pulled off the socks, maggots began to fall out and crawl around on the bedsheet. One of the LPNs began to gag and had to leave the room, but she was a trooper and soon returned only to gag again and exit the cubicle.

Now that the unpleasant stories about socks are out of the way, I can share some other views on socks. Why are grandparents that buy socks for kids as gifts so behind on “what’s in?”When white socks were in style, grandparents were buying black socks or colored socks with several bright hued stripes around the top of each sock. When they caught on it was white socks with the colored bands, kids were wearing solid colored hosiery. Kids would rotate through sweat socks, crew socks, and athlletic socks. Then kids’ sock producers decided to put super-heros, animals, and various other designs on the socks. With a wide range of subjects, manufacturers began to specialize and target certain kids with their socks…and when adults were just catching on to designs that their kids like, the kids began to wear mismatched socks. When I was that young mismatched socks meant either you dressed in the dark and you couldn’t find the matching sock or the sock you were looking for had a huge hole or massive run in it, but grandparents, pay attention. If you have two kids to buy for, buy two pairs of different designed socks then you can give each kid one sock of each design, becoming a hip grandparent. Probably by the time I post this, kids will be wearing something else.