Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I Guess We Were Poor...

I loved Mayo sammiches when I was a kid.

Hell, I think I was 10 before I ever knew that hamburger rolls existed. I still like a burger cooked in a cast iron skillet and put between 2 slices of white bread.

This thread brought back some memories. I was born in the late thiries and was an only child for 12 years so things never seemed too bad. We got married in 1958 and it wasn't until years later I realized we were too poor to get married. After marriage my wife started looking at my socks which were almost all darned in the heels. She made a lot of cutting remarks as she started throwing them out. New socks were quite a step up in my life.

Jim

We had hoot owls fer chickens.

This. Ive never bought a bag of buns. Bread is better on weiners too. Bread, chili, mayo and weiner. Ummm.

yes, yes!!

Dad's dad was the blacksmith in the small town where they lived. He said as far as basics they got by okay and better than some did during the depression mostly from locals resident and farmers bartering food, fuel and other necessities for badly needed blacksmith work. He just didn't get paid in cash money very often. Mom's family got by on what they were able to grow and raise themselves and bartering eggs, butter and cured pork for what they didn't have money to buy. No cash money seems to be the most common theme with many folks I've know that lived in rural areas during the depression years. Some folks said they were already so poor before the big depression that they didn't notice much a difference.

True stuff here!

I have had more beans in my short life to last me what i have left.

Still like pinto beans but that's about it.

Grew up dirt poor in Rural Va and FL. I had a great childhood with wonderful parents. They taught me good music, a love for reading, and how to leave home at 17 and meet the world head on, and successfully.

Pffffff we were so poor, we didn't even have a floor.

My older brother got messed up bad in a tractor accident when Mom was pregnant with me.
Mentally he's still 8, and can't walk.
Before I turned three, a split rim truck wheel killed dad.
My half uncle threw mom off the farm, and sold it.
We were poor. I didn't know.
I was probably 40, when I started thinking about the time a
different uncle gave Mom bags of beef bones for broth.
She cooked them down and canned the broth.
And cousins dropping off deer. Some even had tags, not many.
Powdered milk, mixed with a little real milk to make it better.
Patches, jeans bought too big and darted, darts taken out as I grew.
Homemade clothes, that was cheaper back then.
We never bought ketchup, Mom canned it. And everything else

I mentioned some of it to Mom, she broke down crying, and said "I can't
believe you remember that." I really didn't understand it then, it just slowly dawned on me, and bits
came together. We both had a cry then. She, embarrassed that was how I had to grow up.
Me, seeing my Mom shamed, while I was so damned proud of her raising us
on nothing but her hard work and determination.

My stepdad came around when I was about 10. He helped out, then married
Mom. I only used the "Step" to be clear. Most people recognize him as my Dad.
Few have a better man in their lives.


P.S. The only time i ever knew we might be poor was because i got free lunches
at school. The middle class kids got reduced lunches. The couple rich kids paid
the whole 50 cents.


P.P.S. This wasnt a poor me.
It was what it was. And I'm proud of my mother.

Take a fork in the back of the hand over that cube of fat in the pork-n-beans

😄😄

Slummy, how much money has it cost you to raise Renny to adulthood? Food, clothes, smokes, gas, tickets and fines. You were a good daddy 😎

An old codger I knew used to claim that he was darn near grown before he learned a chicken had more to eat on it than a neck and wingtips. He said back when he was a kid the grownups always ate first and the kids ate last so by the time the kids got to eat the neck and wingtips were usually all that was left of fried chicken.

My dad took sandwich spread sandwiches to work for lunch every day. Nothing else on them. Just two slices of bread and sandwich spread. We were poor and I knew it. We never went on a vacation. Ate stuff like liver and onions, boxed mac n cheese, pancakes and hot dogs n beans all the time beause it was cheap. We never went to the movies. Grew a big garden and canned vegetables. Didn't have a TV till I was 13. We'd all pile in the car friday nights after supper and go to my grandparents to watch TV. Some weekends us kids got to stay overnight so we could watch cartoons on Saturday morning. The only place we ever ate out was Carrols and that was an extremely rare treat. Usually if we needed to eat while out on the road dad would stop at a grocery store and buy a loaf of bread and a package of cheap bologna and we'd eat it in the car. I never knew what a beef steak tasted like until I was out on my own and bought one for myself.

Our family ate a lot of the same stuff I see spoken of in this thread. Except for the Cream of Wheat. We ate grits. Times were different then. Some things we had and some things we didn't. That doesn't mean we were poor though and I never thought we were. We had chores and grew up working from an early age. We were taught to appreciate what we had and to love and respect those that provided it to us. I learned from my Dad that you ate the burnt toast, on the rare occasion that it happened, not because it was all we were going to get, but because we loved the lady that burned it while she was trying to get the three of her children ready for school and cook them breakfast at the same time.

My parents made sacrifices for the family, saved and invested money that they knew would pay off in the long run and it did. My brothers and I earned money to buy the things we thought we needed and because of that we appreciated and took care of those things. We knew how hard it was to get them. I cleaned brick when I was 10 years old to get money to buy a baseball glove. Still have it 57 years later.

I didn't understand then why I didn't have a lot of the things I saw friends getting. I understand now the values I was being taught and I hope I have passed those values on to my boys. I was never poor.

we ate a hell of a lot of deer meat and cheap beef when i was a kid. and my mom, god bless her, only had a couple of ways to cook it in her repertoire. i remember whining "not steak again" when i was little. but calling it steak was being kind. think the toughest round steak cooked to a hard gray disk in a toaster oven and coated with salt and pepper. dad used to buy a side at a time from a slaughter house that was run by a bunch of czech brothers who barely spoke english.

ate a lot of puffed rice in those days.

no schit.