Those blue light specials

My Dad thought up the concept of the blue light special, almost as good and a lot cheaper, before Kmart was even invented. He lived through post-World War I America, the Great Depression and World War II, all times of hardship and shortages. I, on the other hand, never suffered from want while growing up and had some grandiose ideas, for a working-class family kid.I had developed an interest in drawing, courtesy of Jon Gnagy, a quick sketch artist who worked in charcoals. He had a 30-minute TV program each week in which he walked you through the creation of an impressive piece of art, created step-by-step using his kit. You really could do this. The Jon Gnagy Artist’s Kit included exotic art materials like the paper stomp and kneaded eraser. The fly in the ointment was that my kit was not the official model. It had been pieced together, at my father’s request, by the nice man in the art store. It had everything you needed, just not an exact match, and a lot cheaper. Following Jon’s instructions involved some interpretation from his items to my items. Some of the things had different names or came in more than one grade. The only thing I was 100 percent sure of was the kneaded eraser. Consequently I was always a half step behind the instructions, almost finishing my picture each week.Over the years there were other, similar experiences — the great quality sweater incident and a parakeet instead of a dog, to name two. As a teenager I wanted a certain type of sweater that I thought looked cool. Convincing my parents to give me a clothes allowance, I went shopping on my own. I spent around $25 for a black sweater at a quality men’s shop. This was about the equivalent of a week’s groceries at that time. This is how I learned about returning merchandise. The parakeet was kind of neat, but it couldn’t fetch much in the way of sticks or wrestle bad guys like the dogs on TV. Well, technically he could. He just wouldn’t have had the same impact.I learned from all of this that postponing gratification and settling for less shapes our characters. As I became an adult I learned to act on these life lessons. For instance, the first thing I did after I got out of the house was to acquire two dogs and a quality sweater.I later learned to appreciate what my parents had been talking about when I had my own family and experienced some hard economic times. You don’t need a Cadillac to drive to the grocery store.I am off to the store now. I have to buy a sweater for my dog. Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, from where he appreciates the finer things in life.