Alien Logic

I spent one summer picking apples, the next picking cucumbers. All this before I turned 12.

We were a different generation with a different ethos.

***I wrote a long winded piece but deleted it as I am fully aware that no one is really concerned with the facts, difficulties, and opinions of others in relation to remedying this issue. ***

I agree. I can't remember not working. Helped with my older siblings newspaper route before I started school. Lemonade stands, raking leaves, shoveling snow. Little jobs because my folks couldn't spring for allowances. Then I saw older siblings working while still in high school. They put into the household coffers. But they also had pocket money. I wanted that. Got my first "payroll job" at 14, and worked various jobs until I became too disabled to work at 50. I still do a bit, here and there, but within my abilities.

My ex never learned a work ethic. It's come back and kicked her in the ass, since she's been disabled for the last 20 years. Thank God our kids didn't follow in her footsteps.

Sounds like they would have had to walk far! I hear ya, brother. I had my own pad, car, insurance, utilities, groceries starting when I was 16. I felt I was grown enough to maintain myself and i was. Now I see dudes as old as me that still live with their parents and it isn't because their parents need daily care. Boggles my mind.

I'm pushing 60, and had to learn the hard way. Soup kitchens? Those existed back during the depression. Show me kid with a work ethic and I'll show you a kid that didn't have an easy childhood but whose parents struggled the best they could.

You know when rock bottom is when your mom hasn't gotten her first check, and all there is in the fridge are a couple of onions and some cheap, off brand salad dressing. My sister borrowed a loaf of bread from a neighbor and we had onion sandwiches for lunch. We usually skipped breakfast, do that wasn't a problem.

We spent months with pinto beans and, if we we're lucky, buttered bread. On a few occasions we were luckier still and had cornbread.

For breakfast we'd gnaw on either oats, rice, or our fingernails. Sometimes popcorn and brown sugar were used as cereal.

When school was out the menu was always the same - spaghetti. And not the rich, meaty, vegetable kind.

I still crave all these things, well, the fingernails not so much!

Sometimes we were hungry but we didn't starve. Didn't blame anything or anyone. Just lived. Wasn't til I was much older that I discovered that everybody didn't grow up like that. Funny thing is...I felt sorry FOR THEM.

My ex didn't grow up like us. I don't know how many times I'd drag myself home from work to hear, we don't have Anything to eat. I learned about Hobo Stew a year before I met her. I looked in the cupboards and would throw together something. On time, right after our son was born i came home to "nothing to eat". Two cans of Manhandled beef soups, some milk and instant mashed potatoes, margarine, s d, surprise, sour cream. Whipped it together with the sour cream as a condiment. The girls and I, 6 & 3, sat down and I put a little on their plates with just a bit of sour cream. Welllllll... The ex came home, finally, and said she'd try it. Surprise! Two little girls and I cleaned it up.

I do a lot of, You Might Be A Redneck" memes. There's often some truth behind many of them.

walk TOO far....that is