I had a great uncle who owned a fruit market in a small town in central PA from the 1920s through the 1970s. My grandmother told me that he was so stingy that he forbade his wife from buying toilet paper for their personal use. Instead, they used the wax paper from the fruit.
My great aunt would meticulously flatten it out and place it in a box by the toilet. I can still hear my grandmother's voice saying "the wax paper didn't work so well, but your tuchas never smelled so good."
This NYTimes story brought this family memory to mind. Because the only other story I know about this great uncle (which is probably apocryphal) is that he made good money in the 1918 flu epidemic by driving a cart of citrus to Pittsburgh & selling it.
When my great uncle died, my great aunt discovered that they were millionaires. They'd lived in a small apartment above the shop for 50 years. They never travelled. She darned socks, wiped her ass with wax paper, and made ends meet like the working class woman she was raised as.
Soon after her husband passed, my great aunt got sick and went into a nursing home where she spent the remainder of her days. When I was a little kid my grandma would take me to visit her in the home. I didn't get the full story until much later.
Sorry for the downer of the story...but I feel like my great aunt deserves to have her story told. I have only the faintest memories of her and none of my great uncle. They had no children. This is the entirety of what I know about them.
All the same, I feel like my grandmother's line "your tuchas never smelled so good" deserves to be immortalized. She was really good at making the best out of a tough situation. It's skill we could all use in the days ahead.
