Poverty
Poverty has been on my mind a lot here lately because we have so many newly impoverished and poor. Their ranks have been swollen by millions. I reference some of the numbers here. (This is going to be boring because it has some of my history.)
Korea and beyond
Since its winter I’m going to start off with an experience that I had in South Korea during the time I was there before I backtrack in my life story.
It was the dead of winter. I was riding shotgun in a deuce-and-a-half. (2 ½ ton truck) We were making a run to pick up some supplies In Yongsan. Our truck didn’t have a heater. We were freezing our asses off even though we had our winter gear on. We decided to take a back way in order to get there faster. We weren’t supposed to do that. We were supposed to stick to the main roads.
We ended up going through some extremely poor neighborhoods. We drove past a group of screaming kids playing outside. I wish I was exaggerating about this next part but I’m not. They were all poorly dressed and some not at all. Playing. Outside. Bitter cold. Naked. To this day the image is still with me.
That’s poverty.
Poverty kills.
People adjust.
One reason of many that I make being thankful for the day and the blessings that we have is that I remember not having much at different times in my life. I remember being financially poor. I remember my family living in a 3 room duplex.
I remember times when I bought recap tires for the car. Do they even make those for cars anymore? IDK. A rebuilt battery was $10. In those days I could work on a car myself to put in a fuel pump, fan belt or starter. Now the fuel pumps are in the gas tank. Who came up with that idea?
Cars today are engineering marvels. Nowadays when I pop the hood I don’t even know what I’m looking at. I come from a time of stick shifts, manual chokes and no air-conditioning. I still have Grandad’s fishing car, a “56 Chevy needing rebuilt. It’s possible to stand in the engine compartment.
Let me see, in the summertime it was Keds or barefoot. I had a nice pair of shoes for regular wear and going to church. In the winter I had one of those blue gray parkas. Also had a jean jacket. BTW jeans were not expensive in those days.
When I was eleven I got a job digging the foundations for an addition to their house that a neighbor was doing. The addition was almost as big as their house. Pick axe and shovel. He was pleased with my work ethic and in later years wanted me to go into business with him. But I had already moved on to other things. He was a good man even if he did hire an eleven year old. In later years I would work in a factory where underage kids were employed. The owners of the factory weren’t nice people.
I was in the 6th grade when I got my first pair of glasses. Another hardship for my folks. And of course the nose bridge broke. That happened a lot in those days. So my glasses were taped together just like you see in the movies when a kid wearing taped up glasses is made fun of. Being poor is always funny to a certain group of people.
If that wasn’t enough I also had a slight stutter. I talked so fast that I would trip over my words or get hung up. To this very day I give a little whistle at times when that happens in order to reset.
When they started up a new high school in the area where we lived a dress code was implemented. We had to wear slacks! Buying slacks was a hardship for a lot of those living in working class neighborhoods. Nowadays we would say that the school board was tone deaf.
I got my first pair of real dress shoes in high school. I spent my freshman year keeping my mouth closed because one of my front teeth had been knocked out prior to high school. There just wasn’t enough money to get it capped. Missing teeth was like carrying a sign that said poor.
My brothers and I all had paper routes. We would get up at 4 in the morning and throw our papers before we went to school. I lied about my age to work in a grocery store in town. Dad had already had heart attacks by that time. Right after high school I got a job at a defense plant. Also started college.
Viet Nam was in full swing but I had a college deferment. They upped the requirement for the number of hours needed and there just wasn’t any way that I could afford more college hours and was not about to let my folks try to come up with the money and help so I enlisted in the Army instead for a 4 year hitch. At that time in my age group you either went to college, enlisted or you got drafted unless you had a medical deferment or were a…
“Fortunate Son”.
Life happens.
That’s kind of a long route to get to the point but if you’re reading this you’ve got time on your hands anyway. I try and make it a point to remember every day that there are an incredible number of people struggling right now. People that were and are far worse off than I ever was. People, entire families, homeless. People living out of their cars. People dying because they have no health insurance. Kids hungry.
In every age group there are those that aren’t as fortunate through absolutely no fault of their own. They are good decent hard working people that life happened to in a different way. They needed help before the pandemic. They and the ranks of the newly poor need help. The same thing happened during the financial collapse of 2008. People that never dreamed such financial hardships could happen to them found themselves struggling to hang onto their homes and lifestyle.
We have people in this country living in poverty.
Poverty kills.