She and her siblings would sell vegetables and fruit from the family’s large garden.

“When we sold $10 worth, Daddy gave us $8.75 to buy a Liberty Bond,” she said.

“He never bought a Christmas present in his life,” she said. “He’d take $5 and $10 gold pieces, put them in little bags and tie them on the Christmas tree.”

When the government asked that gold coins be turned in, “We were crazy and turned them in (at face value).”

She remembered once when she needed money for school, her father took a $1 bill and doubled it to make it look like $2.

“He wanted me to learn to count money properly,” she said. “He used to say bread would be $1 a loaf someday.”

She recalls when milk was 15 cents a gallon and getting 25 cents to go to the movies — 15 cents for the show and 10 cents for refreshments at the Orpheum.

She remembers buying a $75 Kennedy bond when John F. Kennedy was president. Years later when she turned it in at the bank, she was surprised it had earned $600 in interest.

“I paid income tax on that, too,” she said.

She didn’t purchase a home until age 60, which she said seemed to surprise those she dealt with. She had never lived in rental property, but lived in homes her parents owned before she became a homeowner, she said.

Favorites are church and travel

Still a member of a First Baptist Church missionary study group, Jennings has been involved in home mission work through the years.

In the early 40s she was regularly taking a carload of nurses who worked at the hospital and lived in the nurse’s quarters at Sixth Street and Fondulac to Central Baptist Church for services.

Her interest in church prompted her to attend several Southern Baptist conventions in various parts of the nation. She bemoans the fact she can’t be as active in her church as she once was. But she still attends some functions, including Keenagers, and enjoys playing cards and games at Keenagers and talking with friends.