growin' up poor
elubsme
Member Posts: 2,321 ✭✭✭✭
The turnip thread got me to reminiscing. We ate a lot of 'em. Fried taters & weeners, creamed corn on white bread, and sometimes a real treat, chicken necks & backs. Brother & I didn't know chickens had other body parts. Tomato soup, the store brand and Mom always added the full can of water. Pop shot a deer one year with his H&R Topper. Mom canned the meat as we didn't have a freezer. Our neighbor had an apple tree and brother Paul and I would pick 'em and Mom would make apple dumplings & sauce. We weren't stealin' because they never picked them. Mom darned our socks with a light bulb, patched our overalls and made our under pants from feed bags, she did sewing on the side. And we got a new pair of clod hoppers every fall. Pop finally gave up being an "owner operator" and got a good paying job with Halls Motor Freight in Sunbury, Pa. Retired with 27 years and was shop steward for about 15 of them.
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Creamed corn on white bread? That's a new on me. I guess "poor" is different by race or culture. Top Ramen or belly filler like rice here. Ever have crushed up dry top ramen with the flavor packet like chips? Learned that from a mulato girl from elementary school. I still do that every now and again.
S.O.S made with lots of flour, cheap hot dogs with kraut and lots of potatoes. At least we ate.
We were on the poor side Also ,
I will guess a lot of us were
when people talk about the Good old days really they were not so good such things as scraping by eaking out a living for the family are forgotten
Yes Times were simpler granted and neighbors did help each other . I recall neighbor kids even us "borrowing " a cup of sugar maybe coffee .flower corn meal and similar food items to make dinner with . Even a couple dollars for gas to get to work until payday came around .
We always had something to eat some days it was a small amount but we always ate . I think back now i know mom and dad skipped a meal now and then so us kids could eat
I am pretty sure my parents got help from the welfare early on in their life when dad was out of work but it really hurt his pride of being the head of the house and provider and having to ask for help And he would would not talk about it
I know my dad told me growing up his family he had eight sisters they depended on hunting , for most all the meals the garden they grew and the rabbits ,squirrel, opusoms ground hogs racoons, anything eatable was what was for dinner and going with out was common
all the programs like Welfare ,food stamps, food banks wnd the like were not heard of at that time When he was young
Countless thousands Would be dead if they shut down all the programs now . Most would have no clue on living with out the goverment hand feeding and housing them
Yep pretty humble upbringing, and most of those lessons stuck. There ain't much puttin' on the dog around here.
My father, one of too many kids in the family during the depression, staked out his territory in an alley behind a restaurant. He ate leftover food scraped off customers plates into the garbage can.
He was a big kid and joined the army at seventeen, knowing that he would be fed three times a day.
My aunt told me once that when her and my dad were growing up they were poor, they just didn’t know it.
Amen.
But we wouldn't change a thing……
We were poor growing up also . One year ,Daddy made a big deal of making us potaoe soup like he had in the army during ww2. Being small kids ,we thought this was the greatest thing in the world. What we didn't know was the crops had been bad and he made little to no money that year. He hunted ,ran traplines and fish traps ,anything else to keep a family of 7 provided for . Once he took a job moving a graveyard . Was paid by the grave ,don't remember what he was paid although $5.00 sticks in my mind .Course everyone around us farmed also so we were all in the same boat . Thankful that farming prices took off in the mid 60s and things improved .
Anybody eat lard sandwiches growing up? My grandaddy used to talk about those a lot. They had pigs on the farm, but pork was for selling/trading, not keeping (mostly). I remember asking him why they didn't hunt for more meat. He said they did go for rabbits and squirrels and such….but said he didn't remember even SEEING a deer back then. I guess they were about gone during that time.
I was very lucky growing up, I just didn't know it at the time. My parents both went through the depression and were extremely frugal. My brother and I never went without the necessities, but if we wanted anything beyond that we needed to work for it. I had a paper route at 12 and my first real job at 16. In those days, fathers did all the banking and keeping track of all the finances. After dad passed, my mother was both surprised and a bit angry at how much dad had squirreled away. She ranted a bit about all of the coupon cutting and having to wait for sales and keeping the household expenses to a minimum over the 50+ years they were married. I told her to take the money and spend it on anything she wanted. I reminded her of that over and over and then I would get the great depression stories told to me in return. She was a product of her past experiences and nothing I could do would change that. She was a great lady, but frugal to the end.
Both my parents went thru the depression also. We were not rich nor poor. Parents done what parents are suppose to do ..provide. Never went without food or clothing. Dad was very conservative and also put a lot of money away and never..never bought anything unless he could pay cash. He taught me that and it still applies.
Speaking on frugal
When I was young and worked construction one job was a bank we remodeled I got to know a lot of the employees I w as there over a year and a half big building like 10 + stories and lots of work for the company's remodeling
The Fellow in charge of the vault was a retired police officer
It was a huge old bank the vault door was several tons easy
We were talking one day about safety deposit boxes
Part of his job was taking care of them and the customers renting them
He said so many old people who had lived thru tough times had money ,bonds ,gold , jewelry, basic a lot of wealth stored back ( for hard times ) a lot of the people were not long for the world he said .
he did all he could to convince them to use some of it enjoy a trip or three buy something they wanted but nope
They had a mind set it had to be saved
He told me countless times when the old guy or gal passed family would come in and over joyed to find what had been saved back and most ran out and spent in in short order
He Always said it was sad the owners had the mind set to never use any of what they saved worried about hard times that never came
A coworker told of a fellow here in Tennessee who would make his son take off his glasses when he wasn't looking at anything in particular. He didn't want him to wear through the lenses.
I know/knew people like that. Thrifty all their lives and when they passed the kids blew it on fast cars, cruises and good times.
Both my parents were teenagers during the Great Depression. Even when we had a good income, we lived like they did in 1930's. Made it bit tough when other kids got all sorts of stuff and I got only what was necessary.
Guess it didn't hurt me as it toughened me for hard times later in life.
Growing up very poor was not fun in ANY stretch. We did have food which we grew and my siblings as they got older worked for Del Monte and brought items for the rest of the family. Not a chance would I would wish that on anyone.
Growing up poor should be a requirement for anyone running for any political office. It is the greatest learning experience in existence.
I don't think we were poor. But I remember my Dad always brought home pigs feet, pork rines (sp?), butt, the pig's head & various intestines for our Mom to cook up😝
Love pig feet cooked up simmering in pot of spaghetti sauce all day. The meat is sweet and falls off the bones.
That's a new one I need to try. Do you par-boil? When I make Souse I boil the feet twice. First time with extra salt to remove the funk and blood then let it sit with the lid until it gets sort a room temp. Then wash the toes of scum and blood and pull or cut the hairs. Off to simmer for a couple of hours. Is this similar way or do you just put it raw in 'mater sauce?
My mom loved picked pigs feet when I wasgery youg I remember we her buying them made by hormel if I remember
Sadly, us kids I think, shamed her into quitting them,
I never tried them. I have never seen dad even touch one. He would say their mom was knawing on bones again.
Mustard and manoyase sandwiches were commom for us , but a grape jelly sandwich was a huge treat 😋
I remember them off shaped glass jars with crappy sealing lids on those Hormel. Also you had to eat them all since the lid didn't close right after opening. If you put the half eaten jar in the fridge the fridge will smell like pig's feet.
I don't call my self poor growing up. Parents had a two story house in the burbs but we had powdered milk quite often and we rearely ate outside the home. If there was splurge, it was KFC - miss that BBQ chicken and only KFC I ever saw that sold such. Mom would can fruit, rarely had anything for school lunch other than what we made at home and carried in a paper sack, which we were told to bring home to reuse. School lunch was 45 cents and milk 5 cents. Never outfitted us in the name brand clothing of the time (Izod shirts or Nike Cortez shoes were popular) and had jeans with holes. Mom refused to buy anything that was not Toughskins or Wrangler jeans, which were not cool in the 1970s and early 80s. Had a Lee pair that I would wear to school with holes in the knees which was not fashionable at the time, but is now.
Still poor; musta not of growd up.😉
I grew up with enough, thanks to my hard working parents. I never considered us as poor. Poor came later in the mid '70's when I first got married. My wife was an LPN and I was a rookie electrician. There was too much month at the end of the money.
Grandpa had me pick up potatoes after his horse Maggie plowed them up. He stored them in a bedroom in upstairs old farmhouse. Sprinkled lime on top of them to preserve them. Lots of canning and stored the apples up there also. Granny had me pick blackberries in summer that grew along creek running thru pasture. Had to fight off the June bugs and black snakes for berries. No electric or running water but Grandpa's seven kids never went hungry on his meager sharecropping and saw millers pay. I was his first grandchild. I have no complaints as it made me who I am. I worshipped the ground that Grandpa walked on.———Ray
PS: 1st cousin Calvin was KIA in Nam 11/23/67. We were fishing buddies and had no money. When bicycle tires wore out we wrapped monkey tape around them and off we went fishing with a thump, thump, thump.
Dad worked for himself at his gun shop, barely getting by. We would get hand me downs from my uncles, whom were a year or two older than me. We ate a lot of venison, squirrels, rabbits and whatever else dad shot. Even though we were poor with money, we were rich with love and dad would always take a second job to help by us birthday and Christmas presents. Pop retired about 10 years ago, a multi-millionaire. He invented a food processing machine and hold 27 US patents. If you would ever meet him, he looks like a good ol boy and is extremely humble. He still pinches pennies and never forgot where he came from.