The quote,

"Necessity is the mother of invention," is not altogether accurate.

Necessity is not the mother of invention ­ my Mom was.

Early on, before

we kids came along, Dad went into business selling furniture door-to-door.

Dad and Mom agreed that he would run the business, she would run the house

and both of them would raise the children if they had any.

They were blessed

with five kids. Well, maybe blessed isn't the correct word to use. With

five children to wash, clean, feed, and take care of, Mom soon found out

that she had to be creative just to survive.

Like today,

fashion was a big part of our school years, and the need to "fit

in" was just as strong then as it is now. (It's funny how things

change but still stay the same.) Being self-employed, Dad didn't have

the money to keep us all in the latest fashions that we all were just

dying to have. That's were Mom came to the rescue; she saved us from social

embarrassment with her unique hand-me-downs.

Being the youngest

of five kids, as far back as I can remember, hand-me-downs were an everyday

occurrence in my life, but that was okay. We had some very cool hand-me-downs.

Ask anyone

nowadays who started the tie-dye shirts craze, and they will answer with

"the hippies of the 1960s." I know for a fact that this is incorrect.

It was not hippies; it was my Mom.

Mom bought

white T-shirts for us boys to wear during the summer 'cause they always

went on sale right after school got out. The problem was white T-shirts

and Georgia red clay didn't mix. Midway through the summer of '62, Mom

couldn't get the shirts clean so she came up with the idea of tie-dyeing.

Multi-color-tie-dye

shirts didn't spring forth from the flower children who were trying to

make a political statement. No, multi-color-tie-dyeing was invented by

my Mom trying to hide red clay stains on her children's white tee shirts.

Mom was definitely ahead of the fashion world, and Dad was happy 'cause

it saved him money. We kids were happy 'cause we had some cool new clothes

to wear to school.

If you walk

down the hallways of any high school today, you'll see bell-bottom blue

jeans being worn - in some cases - almost worn. This "new" bell-bottom

craze is just an old craze revisited and, like tie-dye shirts, one whose

true origin is truly misunderstood. Older Brother Richard handed down

his long blue jeans to Big Brother James, who in turn handed them down

to Twin Brother Mark, who finally handed them down to me. When I outgrew

them, there was no one left for me to hand them down to so Mom threw them

out, right?

Wrong. When

we grew and the jeans became four inches too short for us to wear, Mom

had the perfect solution. She cut the seams up to the knee and sewed in

material from shirts that we had outgrown. That gave us extra room in

the legs. Then she added three inches of material to the bottom so we

could wear them for another six months. Unknowingly, Mom had invented

bell-bottoms. Mom was definitely ahead of the fashion world, and Dad was

happy 'cause it saved him money. We kids were happy 'cause we had some

cool new clothes to wear to school.

We started

work on Cliff Condos the summer of '71 and complete the massive digging

project the fall of '74. During the three-summer dig, we boys wore the

knees out of many pairs of blue jeans. Mom's answer was not to throw away

the pants, but to cut them off just above the knees. We were wearing cut-off

blue jeans years before anyone else in the neighborhood. Mom was definitely

ahead of the fashion world, and Dad was happy 'cause it saved him from

having to buy us new shorts. We kids were happy 'cause we had some cool

new clothes to wear to school.

Inventing tie-dyed

shirts, bell-bottoms, and cut-off blue jeans shorts were just a few of

the many things that made my Mom the mother of invention. Like most families

back then, we never seemed to have enough money, but Mom seemed to always

come up with new ways to stretch and get the most out of every dollar.

The Boy now is wearing the same size blue jeans as I am, and I'm glad.

Soon I'll have some new hand-me-downs to wear ­ or would they now

be called hand-me-ups?

[Rick Ryckeley

is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

He can be reached at [email protected].]