BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?

Subject: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 02:52 PM

This is not primarily a joke thread.

In the many groups I have led, I have found that many people were raised poor, or lived well below the poverty line for a significant period as adults, but do not identify themselves as such. Yet people raised poor, as they have shared with me, often feel like they are the "only one" in a group.

I think once we "overcome" being poor, we like to leave it behind. Yet there are real gifts that grow under dire necessity. When group members have taken a look into that old (or present) experience, the gifts have popped out. Poor people are resourceful people.

I'll start with a childhood memory--

My mom mostly did her grocery shopping, even in deep winter snow, on a three-wheel bike with basket. We were raised on beans & franks and Kraft dinner... There was often a choice whether we wanted breakfast or dinner, and there were never seconds. "Seconds" were school lunches or another night's supper. We ate a lot of thin soup, too.... Meatloaf was a luxury.

Yet we were surrounded by affluent suburbia-- my mom wanted us in good schools and that was where we landed when our family broke up and she found a job to support us-- she had taught herself shorthand and typing, and landed a job running a nearby orthodontist's practice. The pay was low but she got paid vacations and a pioneering retirement fund that she now lives on in comfort.

Gifts? I KNOW that I can always figure out what to do under any rough circumstances.

You?

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:02 PM

How Poor Were (Are) You?

Can't even make a down payment on paying attention????

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:24 PM

Will you allow a couple of jokes first?

A line from the film "92 in the Shade":

"I'm so broke, if turkey was ten cents a pound, I couldn't afford a raffle ticket on a jaybird's ass."

From Dick Gregory's autobiography:

"There were so many kids sleeping in one bed, when you got up at night to pee, you had to leave a bookmark so you wouldn't lose your place."

You can go back to being serious now.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:34 PM

My father always had a job, even during the depression, as a Western Union lineman...until he couldn't work any longer due to illness, then my mother went back to work as a medical secretary.

So... I never went 'hungry', though we drove a 37 Chevy until 1952, and we had potato soup often, and I never ate a grilled steak until I was an adult...(I thought 'steak' meant cheap fried round steak). My first bicycle was used...as was the 2nd....as were many of the toys I had as a kid.

So, we were not poor, but we could see it from where we sat in our modest little houses.

I have never owned a new car.....

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Gurney
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:41 PM

Susan, with regard to how poor you consider yourself, I suspect that that depends on your social group and neighbourhood. There were people in the 1930s who committed suicide because they were down to their last $million, and people who live on what I consider a frighteningly low budget, but who take pride in their spotless home and fine children, and hold their head high.

For myself, my parents almost didn't drink or smoke, so although Dad was never well-paid, we never wanted for anything. Dad always had a motor vehicle, although he went to extraordinary lengths to make the first car work, and we had the first automatic washing machine and television in the street.
But we rarely had anything new.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: olddude
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 04:02 PM

In my neighborhood growing up in the mountains, if we didn't grow it, shoot it or make it, we didn't need it ..

Funny we never thought of ourselves as poor, we just made do with what we had ..

only now as an adult, I realize how broke we really were, but we were happy, never hungry and always had a roof over our heads .. seems like a good way to grow up now that I look at it. We had the whole woods as our playground .. never needed camp or toys, we had it all right there

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 04:07 PM

Kendall reported at some point that his childhood home was so small, and he had so many siblings, that he never got to sleep alone until he got married...


A

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 04:55 PM

Yes of course humor makes sense to include, but it's not just a thread for one-liners.

I want to KNOW people.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:03 PM

I don't really like the moralistic non-sequitur of "my parents almost didn't drink or smoke, so although Dad was never well-paid, we never wanted for anything".

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: gnu
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:03 PM

At the age of ten, I trapping rabbits, hunting, fishing, mowing lawns, trimming hedges, shovelling snow, washing windows, forking horseshit in gardens... whatever, for whatever pay I could get. I wasn't poor. I came from poor and they taught me.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:07 PM

I've lived in El Salvador and seen what poor is.
No matter how broke or hungry I am, or the hardships of my parents and grandparents, I know I'm not poor.

a.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:10 PM

In winter our Gran would suck a Fisherman's Friend, and we'd huddle round her tongue for warmth.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: frogprince
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:27 PM

Grew up on a southern minnesota farm. The good news: we weren't hungry, and only our everday work clothes were ragged and patched. The less good; the windows in the old house were so drafty, the pile of winter blankets on my bed was topped off with the remains of a very heavy old overcoat too worn out for wearing. I guess we had a good year in 1951 or 1952; Dad was able to update from the remains of the '34 Ford to a '49. In a lean year, I didn't always get a dime or a quarter by asking for it. The most regretable part was being so tied down with farm labor that, apart from going to school, it was a rare treat to do anything else. I'm afraid that all work and no play really did make Dean a rather dull boy in his early years.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: bobad
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:31 PM

Good post Alice. Poverty, like wealth, is relative. When you see the extreme poverty of some people in so called "third world" countries it's pretty hard to call yourself poor in places like North America or Europe.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:42 PM

At 11 yrs old, I wanted a ball glove...it cost $7....my allowance was 35¢ a week. When we wet to get it, we had forgotten about tax, so my mother and the clerk reached some sort of deal. I used that glove for 8 years.

How many remember 'air conditioning' being merely a squirrel cage fan blowing air drawn through wet 'excelsior'(shredded wood)? We thought that was living high when that was installed! (We had one for the 37 Chevy, too...fastened to the passenger side window and forced air thru wet wood and into the car.)

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Emma B
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 06:06 PM

sorry W y s i w y G ! but here in the UK it's almost impossible not to hear the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen Sketch and its many varients from that thread title

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 07:19 PM

Em, I just read that sketch out loud to my son and just about peed my pants laughing.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 07:34 PM

I loved that "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch. It made my sides hurt.

It looks like it has a long history. At YouTube, you have your choice of several different performances.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 07:44 PM

It's all very well to hear it in your head...but it's quite another to give into temptation to quote it when requested to stay a bit serious... I know many, many "we were so poor that" jokes, and at least one song.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 07:53 PM

Well, I grew up in a middle class family... My dad worked for Ford Motor Company as a district rep and my mom worked part time fir an archeitect... So poverty wasn't an issue...

Then, when I was in my early 20s I took a job teachin' GED in the Richmond City Jail thru a drug rehab program and also worked at their half way house... Rubicon paid subsistent wages which means that you are poor.. That lasted about 4 years during which time I had to eat at the half-way house because food was a luxary I couldn't afford... I had an old Karmann Ghia which had a bad starter motor and when I did have to drive it anywherer I had to park it on a hill to roll down to get it started... A used started motor back then was about $20 but seems that $20 was outta reach... Yeah, my parents would send my a $100 now and then which would go toward car insurance but for those 4 years, yeah, I was living under the poverty level... But I lived good... I had food at the half-way house... I was workin' on my 2nd degree at VCU and I never once thought, "poor me"... No money but, hey...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: kendall
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 07:56 PM

There were 11 of us all told. We lived in a small house and what I told Amos was the truth, not a joke.
We had no fridge or bathroom until I was 13.
My Father hit the bottle when he lost his job during the depression and he just drifted away. Had it not been for welfare I don't know what would have happened to us.
We lived 5 miles from the nearest town and for most of the time we had no car. My Mother carried groceries and worked all the time to keep us fed, clothed and sheltered. I don't know how she did it. She was a saint.
I make jokes about poverty but there is nothing funny about it when you are stuck in it.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Emma B
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:07 PM

It's exactly because there is nothing funny about (relative) poverty and I was brought up in a household with shared sibling bed, no bathroom no fridge no car etc myself that it IS necessary to laugh!

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: ranger1
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:13 PM

My mom had to tell me the truth about the Easter Bunny when I was five, because my parents didn't have money for Easter candy that year. Other than that, I didn't know we were poor. I was a Headstart kid, but didn't realize that it was an income level program until I was in my 20s. So yeah, I guess we were poor, but I never knew it at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Slag
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:19 PM

I grew up very poor. My brother, two years older, always had a scheme which involved my money and not his! Other than that, we kids didn't know what poverty was. We'd wear holes in the patches on the knees of our pants and didn't think anything of it. Mom would fix'em. And I kid you not! I grew up in Green Acres part of Delano California. Honest that was the name of the neighborhood. There were grape vineyards across the road and cottonfields began at the end of the block. Five miles north of us was Earlimart and the next town up was Pixley. Some of you will remember Pixley from the old Eddie Albert TV show titled, um! Green Acres! Get the picture? They used Pixley's water tank on the show quite often.

I now know my folks struggled, now I know, but not then. They never showed it or complained within our hearing. My brother had a very sickly first two years of life and the folks' debt was substantial. It wasn't until I was about eighteen when they began to prosper from my Dad's welding business. We were, you might say, lower-middle class, on the poorer side compared to a lot of folks but nobody was comparing then. I loved my childhood and could tell you tales that would curl your teeth! It was fun. What the hell is "poor"? And yes, Bill_D, we ran an evaporator cooler in the summer, the one with a big squirrel cage. We'd play outside in the 110 degree heat and when we couldn't stand it any longer we'd come a running and burst into the house and wrestle to see who would be first under the cooler.

I'd pay a lot from now to go back and live those days again. Priceless. We were rich!

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:32 PM

Slag, I lived in Fresno in the 1970s, and often had work to do in Earlimart, Pixley, and Delano. You brought back memories.
Was it Pixley that has the old-fashioned A&W drive-in off Highway 99? It reminded me of the drive-in near the house where I grew up in Wisconsin.

I thought we were poor when I was growing up in the Village of Wind Point, north of Racine, Wisconsin - mostly because there were five kids in our family. We were Catholic, so we had halibut steak on Fridays - one piece split among the seven of us. And on the rare occasions when we had beefsteak, we'd split one steak among the seven of us. We didn't realize that Wind Point was a rather exclusive suburb, and that my dad earned a salary well above what people in the city earned. Still, it didn't seem like any of the kids in the neighborhood we wallowing in materialism. We cut grass and delivered papers and did babysitting to earn money. Teenage kids didn't own cars or expensive electronic equipment. My youngest sister was born in 1957, nine years after me. Her life seemed to be much more affluent than mine.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Slag
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:52 PM

Delano's A&W was at the south end of Main St. two blocks off High St. which was actually Highway 99 until the Freeway went through somewhere in the early 60's. I think Pixley did have an A&W just off the Highway but we never ate there. What kind of work did you do?

I grew up working in my Dad's welding shop. Let me tell you, in the summer that was the place to be! Seems we'd average 107 to 110 most days with a few of them on into the teens. Add an electric blast forge, a few big torches going, a couple of arcs running and the water just came through you. At the end of the day your clothes would all be white from the salt leeched out of you.

I've explained else-when that I chose the name "Slag" not becasue I like polemics so much but that was my very first job: chipping slag off welds! I've used the name "Slaghammer" in gaming quite often.

BTW my baby sister is eight years younger than I and she was born in 1957! Yep she was the folk's darling and NOT A BOY! She had it pretty good. My Brother and I provided no rest for the folks, you know!

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 09:46 PM

I've shoveled snow, cut lawns, carried papers, and caddied in 90+F temperatures with 90%+ humidity. The money I earned went towards food, shelter, and clothing -- as did the money my siblings earned too. I worked my way through Catholic high school washing dishes, cleaning the gym floor, and stuff like that. I remember that in grade school we would sometimes get leftovers from the convent of nuns who ran the school.

We got a new pair of shoes once a year; other clothes were hand-me-downs from other kids. My mother would NEVER accept state aid or welfare other than Social Security survivor's benefits and, later, some money from the VA.

We were never poor, somehow. Times were just always hard, but we had a roof (that my father built before he died when I, the oldest, was five), food, heat, clothing of some sort. At a minimum there were six of us living in that house at the same time...and it had one bathroom and it was NOT large.

But my mother saw all four of her children graduate from college and me receive a Master's degree, her three sons marry, she had two grandsons she met before she died, and even took some college courses herself "just to see if I could do it."

The wolf was always at the door, but we killed and ate him instead of feeding him.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Gurney
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 01:59 AM

Richard Bridge, if you don't like my mentioning what my parents avoided in the 1940s so that they could get by, then bad luck! I admire them for it, and that is what Susan was asking. Some kids in my circle had much less than we did because their dad spent time in the boozer.

Seamus, I wonder if half the readers know what a Fisherman's Friend is?   
Good job you capitalised it.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: GUEST,Down So Long
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 05:00 AM

Soooo Pooooor

Our daddy painted our feet black and laced our toe-nails up.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: banjoman
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 06:13 AM

My Dad died when I was seven and my Mum was left with 4 young children and she was only 35. We never wanted for food or clothes although I soon got used to not asking for things which my friends got as presents. It stood me in good stead as I learnt how to build a bike from bits scrounged from a tip. I also repaired a guitar which someone had thrown away. I hope that I have passed some of this on to my sons. As for me, I was made redundant four times in 10 years and managed to keep going on a diet of odd jobs and music gigs.
Again it stood me in good stead as I have now retired and spend a lot of time making my own instruments and doing a bit of teaching.
We were never poor in spirit

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: I don't know
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 06:35 AM

We were never poor but definatly not rich. My brother & I were feed & clothed & had small amount of pocket money. Toys were usually new except bikes which were secondhand because we outgrew them so quickly. Most of all we were not poor because we were LOVED.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: kendall
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 06:50 AM

I'm glad I know what a "Fisherman's friend" is; otherwise it could be mis understood!

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 07:13 AM

I've been broke occasionally - like now.

I don't think I've ever been poor.

Poverty is relative, anyway. Fifty years ago, if you had a car and a television set, you were well off. Now, you can have them, plus a computer, and still be poor (or broke).

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 07:28 AM

My father was a hospital cook so not well paid.
As was said further up the thread, poverty is relative. We had the Welfare State so no fears about medical bills, and the Family Allowance probably came in handy.
It didn't feel poor, took it for granted that food might be made out of cheap ingredients and clothes were 'homemade' (and sometimes looked it).
There was enough money for what we needed, not what we wanted. The 3s 6d for music lessons might have been hard to find, but I had them.

For some reason we attended a church in Ealing (a posher London suburb than East Acton, where we lived) so we were among well off professional people.

My parents did all sorts to make a bit extra; soft toys (when things were in short supply in the shops), dress making, cake decorating - my father made the rich fruit cakes, mother decorated the in a way that would seem slapdash compared with the fancy tracery people do now.
When things eased a bit the cakes were still made and sold IAO the missionary society.

The frugal habits have never left me. Stood me in good stead. And as a child I think I got more pleasure out of my toy farm by deciding whether to buy a cow or a pig this week, from the display in the toyshop window than I would if I'd been given it complete.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Dharmabum
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 08:37 AM

Financially,I guess we were poor.
Though,I never really knew it.
My father died in '64 when I was 11 years old.
Left my mother to raise my younger brother & me.
She recieved a small amount each month through my dads S.S. benefits.
Pride would not allow her to accept food stamps or other assistance.(tho it was offered)
There were quite a few nights that dinner consisted of elbow macaroni with canned tomato soup sauce. Occasionally a hot dog or two would be chopped up & thrown into the mix.

But we never went to bed hungry,always had a roof over our heads & never went to school with ripped jeans.
Not a person entered our house that wasn't offered something to eat or drink.

Growing up that way,I was given the tools to always find a way to get by,no matter what situation was thrown at me.

I still shop dollar stores & yard sales.
Show me a dumpster & I'll dive in it.
The most expensive thing I've ever bought new was my Taylor guitar.

Truth be told,I still like macaroni & hot dogs.

DB.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 08:42 AM

Cardboard box - you were lucky!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 09:21 AM

I suppose I benefitted from my own parents less well off childhoods and of course the war, being a baby boomer they wanted me to have what they didn't have for example having my own room. Both my mum and dad came from very large families never having a room of their own or a bed for that matter, I was better off.
They both worked hard, my mum first took a job where she could take me with her and then later when I started school she began working part-time until I got to an age that she could increase her hours. She made sure that wherever she worked it would be quite local to where we lived. She found that she couldn't have anymore children after me and in a way I think she was relieved. My dad did lose a job at one point and was driving around in a Skoda for a while and was the butt of a few kids jokes at the time now I realise that I was fortunate to ride in a car at all. I don't remember suffering too much from him being out of work apart from his temper mum was trying to keep things calm on the 'pin-money' as he called it that she was earning. He didn't really mean that but he was probably feeling bad about himself. And nothing seemed to stop me going to the local dance classes every Saturday so I still had some interests, we didn't have a telephone in the house though until I left home. Maybe that was just wisdom on my parents part!

When I got married I was 19 and unlike some young people today had been working full time for one company since I was 16. Instead of flitting from one job to another I stuck with the company from when it opened until the firm moved to another county and learned as much as possible including operating the computer which was very basic at the time, but I just knew it was worth while sticking with. My boss then always encouraged me to save money every week in the bank without fail no matter how small so just got into the habit. But I didn't go with the Company it was too far as far as I was concerned and I wasn't confident enough to be so independant.

My now ex-husband passed to get into the Fire-Brigade and was doing well so we contemplated getting our own house instead of renting. We went through highs and lots of lows then, not just financial and highs and lows when I found myself on my own with my boys.

I don't consider myself poor compared to some I am lucky to still have a job. How things will be when I am a pensioner might be another thing.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 09:41 AM

Love all the posts-- short and long, funny and not.

I'm dashing around today, so briefly, what I recall at this cooler time of year is the entire YEAR I Lived On Oatmeal.

There are a lot of ways to make oatmeal.

But none of them prevent hair from falling out and gums from bleeding.

I still have one spot where the gums never did recover, and not enough money to pay to have that or any other mouth problems fixed.

Good thing my teeth are from me ma and not me pa, because her peeps had New England teeth. Nary a cavity-- lifelong. When my gums flare up I just rinse hard with germ-killer and wait for the pain to pass. (The pain travels down the vagus nerve thru the chest and thus feels just exactly like a heart attack is described-- but never is a heart attack, TBTG.)

But before long I will lose the two lower front teeth-- not enough gum left there to hold them. Every ear of corn I eat in the summer is a blessing and a curse; when I chow down on one at a parish picnic and have to grin my pleasure, I always wonder if teeth will fallout as I do it. (There is a heavy price to pay for skipping the corn, which also gives me the shits but that's age, not being poor, LOL.)


Another "benefit" to being raised poor: having people tell me that since I am a "real survivor" and/or "tough," I don't REALLY need their help. (Another blessing and curse.)

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 10:26 AM

been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty don't ya know, and I'm still, willin'
Out on the road late at night, Seen my pretty Alice in every head light
Alice, Dallas Alice

I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
And you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'

I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet
Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still... willin'
Now I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico
Baked by the sun, every time I go to Mexico, and I'm still

And I been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
And you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin


Hard life is it not!!

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Becca72
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 11:40 AM

Like Ranger1 I only found out later in life that we didn't have much money as I never really wanted for anything. My parents always found a way somehow.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 11:48 AM

Dharmabum I still do give my kids pasta with tomato soup sauce! Poor is a very different thing these days. We have all mod cons and while we have had to downbrand in the supermarket we never go hungry and yet we have less 'money' than we have ever had in either of our lives. Like many people of my age I was brought up on the buy now pay later which works fine until you hit a glitch and the outgoings outway the incomings. Many are now paying the price for easy credit and will probably think twice before going down that road again.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Emma B
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 12:03 PM

Memories of cheap filling food from childhood .... anyone else have pobs for supper?

Scraps of bread stirred into hot milk and, maybe, a little sugar

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: kendall
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 12:07 PM

You had sugar? no, I won't spoil this with humor.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Charmion
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 01:03 PM

Pobs, yes, and Toad in the Hole (how to make four sausages feed five people), and Train Smash (pork liver fried in bacon fat served with mashed potatoes and stewed tomatoes). I doubt we ever ate anything that cost more than 29 cents a pound until well up in the 1960s.

My two brothers and I grew up with house-poor parents in a village within commuting distance of Ottawa. Priorities were medical expenses -- our mother had a serious chronic illness -- and the endless struggle to keep the house habitable. We were socially a little weird but economically normal to the residents of the original village, but as the nearby subdivision filled up with city-type people we began to feel poor.

Money was hard to come by, but one could collect pop bottles for the deposit (two cents each) and do chores for generous old folks who preferred not to spend their July afternoons weeding their gardens. It was harder to deal with the need for capital-intensive items like bicycles and skates; in the absence of cash, we relied on reverse snobbery. Wheedling the parents was at best a waste of time but more often a great way to get a hard smack on the lughole.

My mother liked to tell a story about me that involved a blouse worn by the local rich kid, Marilyn MacDonald. (She had a pony; she had to be rich.) This would be about 1963, and I would have been about nine years old. Apparently I asked Marilyn's mother how much the blouse cost and where it could be purchased. Mrs MacDonald met my mother at the post office a week or so later and asked if she had bought the blouse, and my mother had to say I had never said a word about it. Clearly, I believed that $1.99 was an unconscionable price for a blouse and it wasn't worth mentioning. I normally wore hand-me-downs from my cousins. New clothes were both rare and generally hand-made.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 01:08 PM

We didn't call it pobs. In the South it was Bread and Milk. Much enjoyed, as were Sugar Sandwiches (crunchy and sweet).

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Emma B
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 01:12 PM

.... and tater 'ash - a kind of hotpot/'scouse but with MUCH less meat!
Mum made great pastry and we usually ate this with a 'lid' on

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 04:47 PM

We call it Po' Food (now). At the time we ate it as kids (Hardi has a similar background to mine), we didn't have names for it except, "Here."

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 05:02 PM

I find boasting about how poor you were as distasteful as boasting about how rich you are. Unless, of course, you'd achieved poverty by your own unaided efforts. We were never poor, and I'm glad of that. Though never rich either, my parents didn't have a car or a fridge, and holidays away were few. Like a lot of people back then. But I know that my father as a child used to be sent to the Manchester meat market late on Saturday evening for a penn'orth of blue bits- offcuts of meat already on the turn, that wouldn't last till Monday- to be curried for Sunday dinner. Because my grandfather was out of regular work for 8 years. He was blacklisted as a trades unionist, and when he finally retired in the 50s he was proud that HIS gold watch and chain came not from the bosses, but from the union.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: gnu
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 05:24 PM

Boasting? That is offensive.

Subject: RE: BS: How Poor Were (Are) You?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 05:26 PM

What I notice now is that the comfort I had, when I 'retired' from punching someone's timeclock, that I would be 'ok' because we had a house and Social Security no longer applies.
Medical bills (the dreaded 'donut hole'), rising property taxes and gas prices and grocery prices...etc..., are nibbling away at the edges and we have NO guarantee that we can just coast the 'rest of the way'.

As some of you know, my wife & I do craft shows to cover some of our expenses, but it-gets-harder! We can borrow against the house we 'own', but at times it feels like "I owe my soul to the company store". Credit is tougher, prices are higher and bad management by government institutions are creating 'poor', where there used to be 'comfy'.

Many years ago, there were **cheap** ways to eat & live, as many of us have noted. Nowdays, it is harder to find those bargains, even if you are willing. Since we don't live in a rural area with low property taxes and any way to raise chickens & vegetables, life sometimes feels like just 'waiting for the other shoe to drop'...and like WYSI, that other shoe includes teeth...and there ARE no real bargains at the dentist.