Tag Archives: Helen Yonge Lind

Looking back: Average Lind family expenses in 1946

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I keep finding surprising and interesting things among the many stashes of papers my mother left. Here’s another goodie. It’s a single page summary of the Lind family’s monthly spending during 1946. That was before my time, so it was a family of three, living in a small home on Bishop Estate leasehold land purchased in 1942. My mother was fanatic on keeping track of spending, tracking everything down to individual postage stamps used to pay bills, right up to weeks before she died in January. So this summary sheet is backed up by a ledger book listing outlays for each month. Amazing.

1946

The amounts appear very low expressed in the original 1946 dollars. But adjusted for inflation, they look quite different. I used an inflation calculator to figure out what those 1946 costs would look like in current dollars (actually, dollars at the end of 2012). Here’s my calculation of the original costs adjusted for inflation.

I haven’t had time to pore over the results. What strikes you as interesting? Leave a comment.

Monthly Averages – 1946 Inflation
adjusted
House $1 = 12.62
Mortgage $50.00 $631.00
Property Tax $9.01 $113.71
Lease $15.00 $189.30
Termite control $5.00 $63.10
$0.00
Food $55.00 $694.10
Milk $10.42 $131.50
Soap, toothpaste, etc $5.00 $63.10
Small equipment, replacements $5.00 $63.10
Repairs $5.00 $63.10
Newspapers $2.25 $28.40
Insurance $34.54 $435.89
Clothes $7.60 $95.91
Income tax $40.00 $504.80
Helen, personal $10.00 $126.20
Bonnie, " $5.00 $63.10
Utilities $0.00
Water $3.11 $39.25
Electricity $9.42 $118.88
Gas $1.90 $23.98
Telephone $5.31 $67.01
Medical $10.07 $127.08
Laundry & Dry Cl. $11.14 $140.59
Cleaning woman $20.00 $252.40
Savings (education) $20.00 $252.40
Gifts $19.52 $246.34
Christmas $5.00 $63.10
Bank fee $0.75 $9.47
$363.01 $4,606.80
Inflation calculator: http://tinyurl.com/mfqyjnq
Household spending recorded by Helen Y. Lind,
Honolulu, Hawaii

December 7: Something is brewing….

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It’s coming up on 8 a.m. on December 7. In 1941, it was a Sunday. It was my father’s birthday. The night before my parents had been partying. Then their world changed.

I posted the following back in May, soon after finding a letter of my mother’s penned that day. I’m sharing it again today. Read on.

It was in a box of papers uncovered yesterday afternoon as I slogged through another section of a small storeroom at my parents’ home in Kahala. The papers are dirty, faded, and covered with a fine layer of dust and rather old looking termite droppings and other bits of unknown origin. The papers included bits of genealogy, a collection of British newspapers reporting the funeral of King George VI and the coronation of Elizabeth, a carefully tied bundle of Bonnie’s school work from first through third grades, etc., etc. Then there was a small sheet of blue paper, folded in thirds. I immediately recognized my mother’s clear handwriting.

It’s a letter from my mother to her sister, Marguerite, written late on the morning of December 7, 1941, my father’s 28th birthday, as machine gun fire could be heard overhead and puffs of smoke seen in the sky.

The paper is brittle, there’s some old termite damage, but this treasure survived.

I’ve transcribed it below. You can see the original letter here.

Dec. 7, 1941
11:30 a.m.

Dear Margot:

Something is brewing but we don’t exactly know what the score is. We were awakened by a telephone call from Ma this morning saying that Japanese planes were bombing Pearl Harbor. I had a big head from a party last night so didn’t talk very much. She told John the house was shaking like a leaf. We’ve been sitting here watching the shooting. I wish I were at Waipahu to see more of it. We have to be content with just watching the puffs from the shots.

Every 10 minutes an announcement is made over the radio for people to report for one thing or another. The latest report is total blackout tonight. We still don’t know whether this is real or not. Jimi was called for sea-scout duty early this morning. All ROTC students are getting their equipment. I guess they’ll patrol the streets. One funny thing happened today. We went out to the street to watch them haul cannons. The soldiers were throwing kisses to all the gals along the street.

Guess we’ll have to stay put today. We can’t use the telephone anymore & we can’t drive our cars, so here we are.

11:50 Well, there goes the radio. Station KGMB has been ordered off the air. Governor Poindexter is declaring a state of emergency on station KGU. There come the planes!! Oh, oh, and machine gun fire right above us. I’m getting jittery! Shucks, this letter won’t get to you anyway; might as well quit.

Waikiki street vendors in the 1930s

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This is another my mother’s series of brief vignettes of life in Hawaii when she was young. Most of these were written in the last decade of her long life. She passed away in January 2013, just a few months before her 99th birthday.

Waikiki street vendors of long ago

Honolulu 1941

In the 1930’s when my sister, Marguerite, and I were apartment dwellers in Waikiki, we listened every Saturday for the “flower lady.” She was a little Japanese woman who carried a large basket filled with bunches of flowers and walked slowly down the block calling out in a rather melodies voice, “fla-WAH, fla-WAH.”

Although I have retained a clear mental picture and the sound of her voice, I don’t remember what flowers she sold besides the carnations which were our favorites.

We discovered there wasn’t just one “flower lady” in all of Waikiki, there were several, each with her own territory staked out. To me, they all looked alike, all small middle-aged Japanese women with the same call to potential customers in the same tone of voice: “fla-WAH, fla-WAH.”

Then there was the manapua man that I remember best in the Kuhio Beach and Kapiolani Park area. He was a small wiry Chinese man who carried his Chinese ready-to-eat buns with pork centers in two large cans attached one at each end of a sturdy stick about five feet long balanced across his shoulders. He made his way slowly calling out in measured tones, “ma-na-pu-wa, ma-na-pu-wa.”

I have an earlier childhood vignette of the candy man who strolled the beach area adjacent to Kapiolani Park. Hanging from a strap around his neck and shoulders, and tied around his body just below the waist, was a tray like a small tabletop on which he carried his chunks of candy. I believe it was taffy in subtle shades of beige, pink and white. When he made a sale, he cut and packaged the purchase on his little tray.

Helen Y. Lind
29 Oct. 2003
(age 89)

Note: 1941 photo of Helen Yonge Lind and her sister, Marguerite.

Helen Lind’s classic pumpkin pie

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Happy Thanksgiving!

[text]This is the first year my mother won’t be around to celebrate. The photo to the left was taken a year ago on Thanksgiving at her old house in Kahala. Meda and my sister, Bonnie, are posing with her. As I recall, she managed to eat a full meal, far more than she had been eating day-to-day. And, as you can see, she also was able to enjoy a glass or two of champagne. It was, in retrospect, a very good day.

Yesterday I dug around a bit and came up with her pumpkin pie recipe.

I don’t know the vintage of this recipe. Way back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, her recipes were kept in a small, black, three-ring binder. Most were carefully typed, with handwritten changes and marginal notes as she altered recipes to take into account changing ingredients and equipment. She kept careful notes, even on simple things like pumpkin pies, as you can see. The recipes I found yesterday were in a more modern binder. The older versions are probably in there somewhere.

There are notes from several years of pies (from 1999 to 2005, when she was 91). And the second recipe, clipped from an unknown source, made a smaller amount. Better when you’re over 90, I would guess.

In any case, here’s Helen Lind’s pumpkin pie.

Click on any of the pictures for a larger version.

Helen Lind's recipe

Helen Lind's recipe