Day #89 - Old Man

When I was a child, during the Great Depression, my mother sent me to buy candles because our electricity had been turned off. I gave the clerk in the store my pennies for the candles, and he sarcastically said, "Didn't pay the electric bill?" I held my head up high and replied, "Of course we did, but we want to have dinner by candlelight tonight." I still laugh when I recall our "candlelight" dinner and the look on the clerk's face after my retort. We didn't have much money but we had pride. -- Jean Smidt via Reader's Digest