I was born in Southern California in the middle of the Great Depression, and my father was out of work a great deal of the time. There were no jobs to be had until Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA and CCC were instituted. Dad did everything from pick-and-shovel road work to driving taxi to selling vacuum cleaners door to door to working for the California Department of Agriculture inspecting orange groves for citrus white fly infestations. Then he lucked into a good job with the City of Los Angeles as an accountant and saved up enough money for us to move to Seattle where my parents had come from originally.
Plenty of hard scrabble! So, Kranky Krinkle, don't try to give me any crap about not knowing what being poor or working hard is all about.
With some help from my parents initially, I paid my own way through the University of Washington, first in English Literature and Creative Writing, then in the U. of W. School of Music, And spent two years at the Cornish College of the Arts, a music and art conservatory in Seattle. With the exception of my first year at the U. of W., I paid my own way, ALL the way. School tuition, classic guitar lessons, and singing lessons. With money I earned by WORKING.
Due to an attack of polio at the age of two, I've had to walk with crutches and a leg brace all my life. But to pay my way through school and to eat regularly and keep a roof over my head, I have worked at Boeing as an draftsman and production illustrator, for the Bonneville Power Administration as a technical writer and editor, and for a couple of different radio stations as an announcer and newscaster (news director in one station—so I know how to fact check).
And for a substantial period of my life, I have worked as a professional musician, singing traditional folk songs and ballads in clubs, coffeehouses, on both educational and commercial television, and in concerts and recitals. And I have also written a couple dozen articles for various music magazines.
This I consider to be my real profession.
No, I have not lived in a trailer park. But from time to time I have lived in small, one room apartments, and at one time, in a converted garage. To keep costs low so I could pay for school and lessons.
I did not say that everyone in Mississippi and Alabama are "trailer trash." I didn't call anyone "trailer trash."