Did You Grow Up Poor, Rich, Somewhere In The Middle?

I think middle to lower middle class, my father worked full time and my mother was a housewife, staying home and caring for me and my 3 siblings. We grew up in a rented four room apartment, so things were tight, hand-me-downs worn, etc. Some hand-me-downs were exciting to get, lol.

We never did without though, always had a good hot meal on the table, and new outfits when we needed them. Our home was modest, but rich with love, I can't complain. Some summers my father rented a small bungalow near the beach, so we could have a change of scenery when school was out, they had priorities when spending their savings. Taught the value of a dollar at a young age, and never wasted money I did have, life lesson that helped me escape the workplace earlier than some with retirement.
 

C'est Moi said:
I suppose "somewhere in the middle." We were a typical family of the time; mama was a housewife and daddy went off to work. Not a lot of luxury but food on the table, a comfortable home and a happy family.
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Same here. When I was very young my dad was out of work for a while and times were very hard but I didn't notice it much at the time. My mother told me later that it was a very scary time but as a little bitty kid, all I knew was that we still had food and a home. My folks always had to be careful with money, but we always had what we needed.
 
Very poor.
We were poor due to lack of money management by the parents. One drank and gambled (cards) and the other took drugs and gambled (ponies.) Every month either the electricity or the gas was off due to non payment. No hot water to bathe and no food in the house. Arrears was one of the first words I learned as in: "your rent is in arrears again."


There wasn't a Jr High in our neighborhood so they sent us to the closest one. It was in a super rich area just two miles away. One of the kids (from that area) asked where I lived. I told him. He looked at me very strangely and said very slowly, "Oh, you live in a slum." I had NO idea until he told me. LOL.
 

Middle, I grew up in a 1929 house that my parents bought in 1933 for a whopping $3,300. A couple of years ago we saw an online listing of that exact same house for just under $500,000. There were 6 houses the same on that block, 2 had telephones and 2 had cars, ours was the only household that had both. My mother never learned to drive and she never worked after she married. Before WW2 my father traveled, sometimes by car, often by train and twice he got to fly on DC-3s. I have the bill of sale for the 1937 Chevy that he bought new for about $700.

I never felt that we were "well off".
 
I grew up very poor. My dad worked in the saw mills on the Oregon Coast and later in the Willamette Valley but spent most of the $ in bars. We had an outhouse till I was 13 and usually well water. Several years we lived in a 1 room cabin (shack) and an old rusty trailer house. For a few years we had oil lamps for light, cooked on a wood stove. My mom was very sick and times were rough. I have good memories of my parents going out and digging for clams and my mom frying them up for us to eat. They would also take crab nets to a dock and we'd eat fresh crab, which was wonderful. I think it was all free back then.

In those days there was no food stamps and I recall my parents going behind a bakery on certain days of the week and buying "chicken feed" at $1 for a huge bag and we would take it home and joyfully go through it and get the left overs from the bakery to eat. I think most of the people took the bags home for their families to eat. My brother and I were talking about that a few months ago, donuts, parts of cakes, all sorts of old or mashed loafs of bread. My brother reminded me of the occasional whole pie we would find in there! If the pastry was too old and dry my mom would sprinkle water over a few pieces at a time and then put them in the hot oven of our cook stove and that would soften them up pretty good.

We knew we were poor and sometimes school mates were cruel but we also had a lot of good times. We never lived in a city after I was about 3 years old so I grew up running around on the beach or in the forests till I was a teen. I had a lot of good times with my siblings. It wasn't fun having an angry alcoholic dad though.
 

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