I didn't know we were poor

debodun

debodun

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Location
way upstate in New York, USA
When I as a kid we lived first in a 3-room apartment (bedroom, kitchen and living room) and when I was 4, we moved into more of a flat (3 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and living room) in the same building where we stayed for 19 years. My dad worked as a laborer in the nearby paper mill (which went OOB in 1971). Mom worked occasionally as a nurses aid, but was mainly a stay-at-home mom. My dad probably never had more than $1K in his bank account, but I never wanted for anything (except maybe a pony - LOL). When I expressed the sentiment that I wanted to grow up so I didn't have to go to school, my dad would say, "When you grow up, you go to the school of hard knocks." I was happy then and didn't know it.
 

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I can associate with this as we were a farm family and never knew we were poor because everyone we were around scraped to survive.
We were never hungry, but we looked forward to a hand me down shoes,coat or clothes. Years later I was asked why I had so many pairs of shoes I just answered, ''you wouldn't understand .'' We got 1 pair Clod Hoppers and you worn them until you out grew them, I can remember putting hog rings in the soles to hold them together. I developed a ''shoe fetish'' and probably have 20 pair because I would not throw any away until the leather has rotted. I would resole them, repair etc. Today I just truck around in a $5 pair of plastic Crocks I bought at the Dollar Store. lol
 
When I was little I lived on my grandmother's farm. We didn't have much money but my grandmother had real wealth in the form of land, buildings, machinery, livestock, etc...

When my mother remarried we moved into the typical middle class with my parents both working in a factory and bringing home a union scale paycheck every week.

The odd thing about living in farm country is that the rich don't look much different than the poor.
 
When we were kids, the true middle class did not require two paychecks, the man was the provider, the woman was home. If she worked, then the family wasn't really middle class. At least in my environment.

eta--unless it was a woman with a profession, usually teacher, or nurse.
 
Pepper said:
When we were kids, the true middle class did not require two paychecks, the man was the provider, the woman was home. If she worked, then the family wasn't really middle class. At least in my environment.

eta--unless it was a woman with a profession, usually teacher, or nurse.
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So I really was poor! :(
 
I'd say we were pretty poor. But I never felt underprivileged. Outside of a few kids whose parents had a lot of money, most of my schoolmates were just about in the same spot. I can't remember particularly longing for what the wealthy kids had......it was just sort of "understood" that some had *it* and most others didn't.

One girl I went to elementary school with was quite well-to-do and flaunted it a bit. I just can't recall being all that envious and feeling like the Little Match Girl about it. I think we just accepted that we were we and she was she and *we* weren't ever going to be *she*. That was life as we knew it.
 
We didn't have a lot of money but I never felt poor. I did recognise that some people I knew were better off and I considered them to be rather rich. I had no idea about the lives of the people who were described in the newspapers as wealthy.
 

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