When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, women shopped.  It was a big deal.  Up and down main street , looking in the windows that were staged to invite you in to buy--which very few of us could afford.  Stores specialized in one thing.  Not like Target and Wall Mart.

We all wanted to touch the product.  Hold it up, try it on.  We don’t do that any more.  Amazon is too convenient.  We are too busy to shop, and don’t really want to do it anyway.  When women went to work in the forties during the Big War, there was no turning back.  They didn’t have to ask a man for money. They made it for themselves.

And more than anything else that has happened in the last 80 years, it changed the way America functioned.  I don’t know if it was good or bad--with a female work force, the family changed, and mom wasn’t there for the family like she used to be.  Meals changed.  Child care changed, main street America closed their doors.  I lived through it.  I didn’t go to work until I was 39 and I thank God I didn’t have to.  Ken always gave me the paycheck anyway.  “Manage it,” he said.  I won’t be here most of the time and you need to know how.”  That was the truth.