[LEAKYSEALS951]

I just got a pair of shoes tonight and it got me thinking about two stories in my life which are more or less trivial, but interesting to me.
I buy wingtips, which might not be in highest fashion right now, but I like them. I think a lot of that came from my father. His father shined shoes before the depression. When it came time to get me a "good" set of dress shoes, my father took me to the shoe store. Wingtips it was.
Here's the interesting bit (at least for me). Evidently at some point in my father's life, my grandfather had instilled a necessary "quality" of shoes in him. As a teenager, I wore whatever shoes my mom bought me, and as a child of the 80's, it was usually "vans" shoes, which I wore until they fell apart.
This drove my father nuts. He took it as an insult and on several occasions lambasted me for wearing ripped shoes. He took it personally and informed me he worked hard to keep shoes on our feet, and there was no need to walk around in tattered footwear. As a teenager in a world of accessible shoes, I was just being a teenager and never meant the degraded nature of my shoes to be a statement.
The same went for food. As a teenager, I liked bread. Plain good old bread. Again, my father would be offended and remind me he worked hard so we didn't have to rely on bread alone. Like the shoes, he felt it an insult to his hard work and dedication to the family. The ironic thing is that our family was well off financially. Due to my father's hard work, we were more than okay. He had nothing to prove to the neighbors (so to speak).
My father was not born until 1945, so I am assuming his concerns about his ability to provide were more deeply rooted in what his father taught him. At that point my grandfather worked in the FBI and was himself stably employed.
I have always been grateful for what he has provided, and by wearing old sneakers or eating plain bread never meant to insult anyone, however, in both cases, one would think I was talking straight to a depression era individual in a time where "holes in shoes" or "only being able to supply bread" would have meant so much more.
I don't know how much of that was my father, or my grandfather talking. I am also cognizant we could return to such a time, but, I was wondering if there were any other stories like that.