Make-Do

I started thinking about a couple of words that you rarely hear anymore - make-do. These words were used a lot in my parents' generation and earlier. On the face of it, make-do sounds like settling for less but it was exactly the opposite. Those two words meant that if you didn't have it, you made it or if you had an income, you waited until you had saved up enough to buy it - you made-do in the meantime.

In the days of make-do, people acquired prestige and standing by their ability to make- do. If a mechanical part was needed, a hacksaw, file and the forge would make a piece of iron into a piece of function and beauty. A fisherman didn't buy boat and nets, he hewed the wood and knotted the twine. Young women filled chests with hand made linens and clothes. Of course, this process was labour intensive but people in the age of make-do had more time than money.

Somehow, the words "make-do" were turned around in meaning to imply that something or someone was not quite good enough. Someone who stood on his own two feet and didn't ask for help was just making-do. Farmers who fixed their equipment, buildings and animals were haywire and making-do. No longer was there prestige in building your own, but a sly winking by the neighbours that he was just making-do.

I was a product of the make-do generation and still had the tendencies, to be stamped out, in my genetic makeup. One look at my basement will show all the good stuff that would come in handy sometime. Oh, don't throw that out, I can use it for... Part of the problem is that I have the manual skills, if not the initiative, to make just about anything. Going to a craft fair is often an exercise in self abuse. Oh, don't buy that, I could make it better, cheaper, etc. When I first moved to the Okanagan Valley, I was able to live rent-free in a pickers' shack. It was more than a shack, it was a small one bedroom house built into the hillside about thirty feet from the edge of Okanagan Lake. The floors, however, were bare boards between which the wind off the lake would blow through. We got roll ends of carpeting for free from the carpet mill in Kelowna to cover the gaps. Now the carpet mill didn't give away good carpet for nothing. These roll ends were the junction between one carpet colour to another - purples, oranges and lime greens. And shag was the "in" thing that year. Making-do.

In the early 1970's, the movement of young people "back to the land", meant that a whole new generation was making do. Houses were being built from cull lumber (sawmill cast-offs) or from farm sheds moved and joined together. Once again, there was prestige within the community of young farmers in making do. Val built a beautiful house of cast-off lumber from the mill in Canoe and even plastered the interior walls with a white home-made plaster rich in barley straw. Don built a house of logs taken from his own forest. Art built with lumber sawn on site from his trees.

It was the same with pick-up trucks. The community became rich with the treasures of 1940's and 1950's trucks that were found in disuse on farms and in orchards. It wasn't unusual at a birthday gathering to find a fine collection of Fords, GMC's, Dodges and Cornbinders (International Harvester) in the yard. What wasn't a pick-up was then probably a Volkswagen.
Make-do doesn't seem to be in the public consciousness at all anymore. Newly-weds will not live in a pickers' shack or an old, small house for a start in life. Buy it new and buy it big. I would like to know what percentage of the huge personal debt that we carry falls into the decade age groups - twenties, thirties, forties. Yes, granted, those of us in our sixties have had more time to work off our debt but typically we started out in a more modest way. I am not slamming the young; they are not only a product of the changing ideas from peers, parents, and marketers but may not have have had the good fortune of having had the exposure to someone making-do. The recent economic nose-dive should have shown that not everyone can afford to have a huge house. Make-do.