Bobert's Volkwagen Story

Well, given what I have seen in my day my story is nuthin'....

...but the name of the thread is "How poor have you ever been?"....so...

It was like 1974 and I had just had my fill of living on sibsistent wages working 150 hours week at a half-way house and, quite frankly, was burned out and so...

...I quit!

I was living with a bunch of hippies in a big house so my share of the rent wasn't too terrible and I did have running water, heat and electricity...

But all of a sudden, that subsistence pay seemed mighty good...

It was winter and I needed to come up with at least a little cash formy share of the food, plus my sahre of the house expenses... There weren't any jobs in the paper so I went to temp agency and they told me to show up the following morning at 6:30.... Upon leaving the temp agancy, the starter motor in my old Volkswagen began to groan and by the time I got home it wouldn't turn over at all....

So, I got my hippie friends to help push it a block away where there was enough incline to get it started by rolling it and popping the clutch....

Next morning I was off and got a job back filling sewwr pipe my hand (with a shovel) for about $5.00 and hour... It was wineter and cold but, hey, I needed the cash so I did it for a month....

Meanwhile I never quite got the extra $25 ahead to afford a used starter motor from the junk yard so it was a lot of parking on hills...

At one point I thought I'd pawn my Martin guitar but there was a voice insie me sayin' "Don't do it".... Plus I was playing at a coffee house (for free) and jsut couldn't bring myself to do it.

Spring came and I got a decent job driving a truck... $6.75 an hour and with my 1st paycheck I bought that starter motor and life has been good since...

Bobert