Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

Old tires have been repurposed as flower pots.

He was 26 when the Great Depression arrived, 36 when it ended. A decade of doing without taught him something about survival. “Keep something seven years and you’ll find a new use for it.” Granddad’s generation handed down their philosophy of making do. It made for a kind of inheritance and it made for a kind of art.

We think of art as creative skill and imagination evident in paintings and sculptures. We should expand art to include how the human imagination turns everyday objects into innovations that possess beauty and emotional power. If necessity is the mother of invention, then making do charts a beautiful path to survival in times of paucity. You don’t have to live during a depression to go without. Mom and Dad made do.

When Mom died 12 years after Dad had passed, my sisters and I set about going through our parents’ possessions. What to keep; what not to keep from their 56 years together of making do. It took us years to sort through things not thrown away. We kept at it week by week, month by month. Then one day, all their possessions were ours, others’, or just gone. My empty boyhood home echoed with memories.

I cannot escape memories of family now gone to the graveyard. I remember how things were, how things changed, and how people made do. So when I see how families made do with things, memories rise like phantoms. Case in point. I was rambling along a back road when I came across old tires. They hadn’t rolled down a Southern road in many a decade. But — and this is the lesson — they weren’t buried in a landfill or burned for warmth on a February morning. No, someone had made do with them. Made beauty too.

Back in the old tire’s day there were no Walmarts, Home Depots, or Lowes where people could buy plastic flowerpots imitating clay or foam pots looking like stone pots from ancient Rome or fiberglass pots the colors of the rainbow. In a time when many homes sported white asbestos cement siding, you saw tires converted into large flowerpots. I sure saw them. They were painted white, had scalloped edges, and red geraniums grew in them. The bright red flowers in those whitewashed tire pots brought beauty into my and other modest people’s lives. The tires had been repurposed, though their creators never explained it that way.

Some memories burn brighter than others. I can take you to an old farmhouse and show you exactly where tires painted white held red geraniums. They flanked the path leading to the steps I walked up many a day. I say I can take you there but I won’t. I prefer to remember things as they were.

Making do and remembering more, it was in the 1980s when I wrote a story about tenant homes. In one old home I entered I saw scraps of egg cartons of pink, white, blue, and yellow. An aged woman had cut the cartons into flower-like petals. She’d stitch the petals together with colored yarn and sell her colorful foamflowers to make a few dollars. You see she knew Mr. Get By quite well. He was first cousin to Mr. Make Do. That cold day I noticed the rat pills and roaches in windowsills, and I caught a whiff of kerosene. She had died just days earlier, denying her final Styrofoam flowers a chance to bloom.

“Repurposed.” It’s a word our throwaway society never uses. Buy new tires and you pay a tire disposal fee. That wasn’t the case in the days of making do. Tires turned inside out with scalloped edges cut into them and painted white gave red geraniums a home. All in all, they were quite pretty and quite original.

Worn-out tires turned flowerpots. Call them planters if you like, but to me they were and shall forever be tire pots. Whoever the enterprising soul was that thought them up should have gotten a medal of honor. And the fellow who made swings of old tires? Well, he deserved honorable mention at least.

Visit Tom Poland’s website at tompoland.net. Email Tom about most anything at tompol@earthlink.net.

Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

We are writing this op-ed to mobilize and unite the members of New Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church to save our church from being mortgaged for the pastor’s personal agenda. We are at a point where we must take action to prevent the destruction of New Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, a 157-year-old African American historical monument to our community. 

It is being predicted that soon we will be facing another shortage. This shortage has to do with the diary department at your local grocery store and of all things it is predicted that butter will be difficult to find in the future.

We are writing this op-ed to mobilize and unite the members of New Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church to save our church from being mortgaged for the pastor’s personal agenda. We are at a point where we must take action to prevent the destruction of New Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, a 157-year-old African American historical monument to our community. 

Notre Dame in the 1960s was a boring place. The winters were long and gloomy, activities were limited, cars banned, no fraternities, no girls,…

The race between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia may determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. It will also show how much voters care these days about character. My guess: more than the cynics say.

"With an acid-tongued remark, Tommy Tuberville put to the lie all the sweet talk he used to lure Black athletes," writes Pulitzer-winning columnist Michael Paul Williams.

? The hosts debate various policing tactics and how best to balance privacy concerns with public safety.

Like Halley’s Comet, I’m predictable. I come around to the same subject matter every so often. When I do, it’s because something triggered memories. A few days ago I drove past the Mule Day Festival at Callaway Plantation at Washington, Georgia. Headed along Highway 78 to the Georgia-Auburn game, I kept on keeping on, but a good crowd milled about on Mule Day.

"I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy and believe that those who purchased flood insurance should have their claims paid," then-Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis said on voting against a $9.7 billion aid package for Sandy's victims in 2013. But, he went on, letting the program increase federal debt by that amount without spending cuts elsewhere "is not fiscally responsible."

Old tires have been repurposed as flower pots.

Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.