I was probably about six when my big brother took me downtown to buy our mother a birthday present. We had a whole quarter between us. Roaming the aisles of Woolworth’s, we saw a rack of Life Savers in a host of flavors. Each roll of eleven cost only a nickel! We knew our mother liked the butter rum best. With a penny tax on purchases from six cents up, our quarter could buy four rolls of her favorite candy.

My brother had a better idea. He went to the clerk with just one roll of Life Savers. Before I could say we wanted more, he handed over our quarter, got four nickels in change, and hurried us out of the store. A few minutes later we went back in and bought another roll. By keeping each purchase small enough to avoid tax, we eventually took home five rolls of Life Savers instead of the four I expected. As always, I was in awe of my big brother’s brilliance.

Two classic rolls of butter rum Life Savers appeared in our kitchen recently, the first I’d seen in years. An image of my long-dead mother sprang to mind, the way a taste or smell or song on the radio can evoke a memory from one’s distant past. I’ve written about her before. While the Woolworth tale features us children, it’s still more about the mother who inspired us to get her the best gift our money could buy. 

My husband calls them comics on steroids. Hard covers and page count aren’t their only difference from the comic books I devoured as a child. Graphic novels (the term includes nonfiction in a similar format) often treat more serious themes and target an older audience. They’re started to gain acceptance as a literary form. A publication of the American Library Association in 2019 designated July as Graphic Novels in Libraries Month.

I might never have read a graphic novel if my book group hadn’t chosen Darrin Bell’s The Talk for this month. The biracial Pulitzer-Prize-winning editorial cartoonist begins his graphic memoir at age six, when his mother explains why he can’t have a squirt gun that looks like a real one. By the end, the adult Bell struggles with how to talk with his own six-year-old son.

Critics of graphic novels for students note their limited vocabulary and simple sentence structure. But for me, The Talk was deep, intricate, and thought-provoking. It took me inside a school kid’s shame at having been questioned by police, and his embarrassment when his white mother makes a scene about a racist incident. Bell’s character arc is compelling. Students who are regular readers may, like me, find it enriching to infer complex emotions from a blend of visuals and text. Students who read only graphic novels might otherwise not read at all.  

The things I take for granted! My thanks for daily blessings range from the love of friends and family to the joy of songbirds in the morning. They have never included such mundane conveniences as a working stovetop. Until last month, when the gas burners would neither turn on nor off.

What to do? Happily, we’re reasonably accustomed to sandwiches, cold snacks, and carry-out. We’re fortunate enough to afford an electric kettle for morning coffee. As for foods I’d normally cook in a skillet or saucepan, necessity is the mother of invention. Some experiments were more successful than others. Breakfast potatoes crisp even better in the oven than a skillet. On the other hand, even after pricking the shell to prevent an explosion, I doubt I’ll ever again try to hard-cook an egg in the microwave.

My gratitude list now includes a working stovetop and so much more. Thanks to the appliance techs who came out on a Saturday to check for safety, ordered the parts, and made the repair. Thanks to the workers who manufactured those parts and the truckers who brought them from the factory. The list goes on and on. Still missing are other blessings I haven’t thought of yet, because I still take them for granted.

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, former colonists renounced their allegiance to the British Crown and created a union of independent states, with ideals of freedom and equality. Titles of nobility were abolished. Citizens were to be equal under the law. For all its shortfalls, the Founders’ vision implied a far less rigid class system than in Downton Abbey (set 1912-28 in England), which I’m watching on library DVDs.

My father was a professor of sociology. As best I remember, he told me social class rested largely on ancestry, wealth/income, and either education or occupation (I forget which).  His salary was modest, his ancestry meaningless outside smalltown British Columbia, but West Virginians held education in high regard. When Dad met former students in the grocery store, they greeted each other with warmth and mutual respect.

The United States has never been a classless society, nor did the Founders intend it to be. The promise of America was the possibility of rising from one class to another. As a kid, I took it as given that each generation earns more than their parents did. That was true for more than 90 percent of Americans born in 1940. It held for only half of those born in the mid-1980s.

Today, rags-to-riches stories are rare. The household wealth gap last year was the highest since tracking began 37 years ago. While a soaring stock market helps the rich get richer, the poor get poorer under a crushing burden of debt. Whether to promote this or reverse it is up to us.

Image: Photos on Unsplash by (left) Louis Moncouyoux and (right) James Day.