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Sat 18 Sep, 2004 08:35 am
since we're reminiscing here...many of us have risen above our humble beginnings....let's hear about it......
The other poor kids looked down on me.
... that I made a soup with just onion & water. (Mind you, I didn't have a clue about how to cook!)
When the wire holding the sole of my shoe wore out I just let it flap under my foot. Had to walk slowly.
Actor Dennis Weaver once told a reporter how his family ate grease sandwiches at times.
hee hee! Never rich but never poor. I do recall some comedian saying that he was soooooooo poor that when he opened his closet, the moths staggered out gasping, "Wool--Wool"
I lived for weeks at a time on rice and beans in college. I broke those stretches with occasional fresh vegetables and outings. To think how low my cost of living was then as compared to now is mind-boggling.
When I was divorced from my first husband, and with a small child, I had only two skirts, and three tops, which I mixed and matched.
We were twelve kids with no support from the father. Older brother went to work at 16 for dollar an hour to support. I followed suit at 15 for seven dollars per day. The state helped out with 99 bucks per month for twelve months. Even in '57 that equalled near starvation poverty.
An example of the father's level of support when we lived with him, we moved under a tree, furniture and all, for about three months. My daughter asked, "Where did you plug in the television?" He he.
littlek, beans? What luxury. A whole lotta ramen here (a meal for 39 cents!!)
When I went clothes shopping (at Goodwill and Ragstock), over a dollar was a little pricey. $5 was the absolute splurgy maximum.
Clothes? You got to buy clothes?
(I can't beat living under a tree, though. Wow.)
What was that like? What kind of a tree? What were the environs?
During my lab internship, I had $61. left from my $169. a month take home pay, called a "stipend", after paying rent and my $13.69 loan payment for the money to move there. True, prices were much lower then, 1965, but that was still a small amount of money. Had to buy nylons -- nylons!! -- and food and pay for the laundramat, nine blocks away, by foot, out of the $61. Oh, and things like a broom, dish soap...
I was estranged from my parents, who had in any case, troubles of their own with my father unemployed and mother working but not earning much. I did go home once to visit, $6.00, Greyhound.
My first job after that paid $439. a month, to put that in proportion.
Anyway, those were the days of buying chicken necks and for a treat, Morton's frozen spaghetti ($0.29).
Oh, I took busses or walked during those years, or rode with friends, didn't get a car until some months after I got that first job.
Other times in my teen years my dad was unemployed for long stretches, but we did have a house over our heads, which they scrambled to pay the mortgage on.
On the nylons, that was just around the time that women were beginning to wear slacks in daily life... but mostly not, and certainly not to work in a hospital...
My aunt had several orange groves. There was a sprinkling of different trees among the oranges and the outer edges were lined with olive trees. My alcoholic step-father gained her permission to move under the largest fig tree I have ever seen. In the arid climate of Lindsay, CA, in the summertime, it was not so bad. We got chewed out for bathing in the irrigation tanks, but did it anyway. One brushy area we designated as the toilet. Drinking water was provided in a refillable five gallon glass bottle, which I dropped and broke. About a month after I started the sixth grade, we moved, upgrading to a canvass tent stretched on a framework of two-by-fours in Campbell.
Daaayumn...
Did it rain at all? Could you eat the figs?
It didn't rain at all. The figs were the great purple kind. Once, we watched my stepfather in bed when an over-ripe fig plopped out of the tree and against his back. We felt such malevolence toward him we watched until he finall rolled over on top of it.
edgar I spent my life wanting to kick my father's ass...I tried it when I stayed with him at age 13 and failed......when I finally saw him again at age 25 when I had the rage and skills to do it....he was broken down, ravaged by alcohol, and too pathetic to bother. He's been dead for over 20 years and it's only just recently that I stopped feeling cheated at least once a day.
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