Bein' Pore

We were so poor we'd walk down the street with one shoe one, and people would ask "did you lose a shoe?" and we'd say "No...I Found One!"

We were so poor we'd eat cereal with a fork to save milk.

We were so poor she opened a Gmail account just so we could eat the spam.

We were so poor when we'd go to KFC she has to lick other people’s fingers.

We were so poor we'd wave around a popsicle and calls it air conditioning.

We were so poor, one time someone asked why were were kicking a tin can down the street, we told them we were moving.

We were so poor, we couldn't afford the Free Clinic

We were so poor, I'd try to go thru the front door and end up in the backyard.
 
I'm so poor, when I go walkin' down the street with one shoe, it's cuz I found one.

I'm so poor, I can't even pay attention.

I'm so poor, ducks throw bread at me.

I'm so poor, I can't fly off the handle. I have to take the Greyhound.
 
The ground was so poor where I grew up, rabbits had to pack a lunch to get across the bottom land.

It was so poor that we had to water the dirt around the telephone poles to get a signal through.



Supposedly true story about them Southern accents: A literary researcher from up North flew down to research Edgar Allen Poe, including a trip to his residence. When he got into a cab and told the driver he wanted to go to the Poe House, he got a funny look, but the driver started off. A short time later they pulled up in front of the County Home For The Indigent.
 
Last edited:
"Poor" is sort of a subjective term. Means different things to different people.

My parents couldn't afford a babysitter for me when we moved to Charlotte. They had just bought this little house that must have seemed like a palace to them compared to our previous house.

Mom and dad had both worked in a hosiery mills down in South Carolina, and after we moved here, mom had gotten hired at a mill here...this was about 1951, and I remember it clearly. It was the Nebel Mill. But she couldn't take the job because of the babysitter issue. Dad had already found work at the old Hoskins Mill here.

I can't remember the mill owner's name, but mom went to him and explained the situation to him, adding that she desperately needed the job.

The next day, that man had this huge (to me) knitting machine delivered to our little asbestos shingle house! They brought it in in pieces and assembled it against the wall of what was supposed to be the dining room. It seemed to take up most of one wall...blocking out a window that looked out into the back yard.

So mom knitted on this machine on what I now know was the night shift. I slept on a pallet on the floor made of quilts that had been made by her mother. I have vivid memories of that machine whirring and clicking and clacking away all through the night, and waking up in the mornings to the sight of mom and dad sweeping up cotton lint from the floor. It seemed normal to me.

Two foods were staples at our house for breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was often brains and eggs. Yes. Brains. They were apparently dirt cheap. I was too little to even know what a "brain" of any kind was. But I loved those brains and eggs, just gobbled 'em up. Yum-yum, eat 'em up. I didn't find out until I was grown that I'd been eating pig brains and sometimes cow brains. I damn near threw up.
barf.gif


Sometimes for breakfast, I'd get a Neese's sausage patty and a piece of toast with cherry preserves on it.

The other thing was oyster stew for dinner. Served up with those little oyster crackers and with dill pickle grated into it. I remember it was kind of a milky color and had things floating around in it. I slurped that stuff up by the bowl full. Mm-m-m-m good, right? I can't even look at an oyster now in any shape, form, or fashion.
gah.gif


So that's one of my we-were-so-poor stories. All true. But I was only a little kid, not even in first grade yet, so I really didn't know we didn't have a lot of money. Nothing unusual about any of this...there were lots of people like us in the early fifties. Lower middle class folks, just trying to get by and enjoy life.
 
I would rather not think about it. Never could get enough to eat when I was a kid. I worked all through high school to buy the stuff most kids these days are given without any thought about where it came from.

After we visited my old home place my wife now understands why I'm pretty tight with a dollar.

Doing just fine now.
 
Last edited:
When I was about 5 my mom "went home to her mother" and took my little sister and I with her. Money was so tight that we ate "hot cereal" - Malt-O-meal, Cream-of-Wheat, Quaker Oats, or boiled white rice, EVERY DAY for breakfast. What I wanted was Fruit Loops or Sugar Smacks or Cap'n Crunch - but they were all too expensive.

Lunch was usually a baloney sandwich. We ate tuna-noodle casserole for dinner about once a week (or so it seemed). Pinto beans, fried potatoes & onions with cornbread were staples too. The potatoes, onions, and pretty much all the fresh the vegetables we got were from the garden. We drank powdered milk, and even ate powdered eggs. Not much beef or pork, other than a little hamburger or sausage, and even fried chicken was a treat.

There was always enough of it all to go around, but it was all the most basic and inexpensive fare available. Kids nowadays would starve if they had to eat such plain simple food - at least until they got hungry enough.
 
I didn't grow up poor. I don't think I did anyway.

Thing that always sticks with me is that every Saturday night in the summer we would load up in the car, go park on Main st by the Penguin Ice Cream shop and each kid got a nickle ice cream and we would eat our ice cream while my dad would tell us what make and year each car that went by was.

I don't think many kids today have the dimmest clue as to how great such a simple little thing like that could be.
 
Last edited:
Billy:

I just found this thread!!

Well, you are correct, there were a lot of poor folks in West Virginia when I was growing up. My family was sort of a mixture, I guess. My mom was a college graduate, went to college right at the beginning of the depression, at that...started in 1929 and graduated in 1933. Of course I wasn't around yet, but although her family put an emphasis on education, they weren't really well off. My dad, on the other hand, only had an eighth grade education, which was not uncommon in his day. The house mom grew up in was not wired for electricity until 1932 or 33, so mom studied (French major, if you can believe it) by oil lamp light. She also walked two or three miles to college every day, no matter what the weather was like. (I heard this story many time when I was growing up). I now teach at the same college that both mom and I graduated from. My office is in the building where most of my mom's classes were held back 85 or so years ago. I have my mom's college diploma on display in my office. Sort of a continuity thing, I guess. My boys also attended the same college (now a university).

After she graduated, mom went to graduate school to obtain an accounting degree. She ended up going to Washington, DC, and worked as a "bookkeeper" at the US Treasury Department. She met my dad in Washington, even though he was from the same town in WV....they had mutual friends who introduced them. They were married in 1939, and stayed on in Washington until 1943. In 1943 one of my moms uncles passed away, and she and dad moved back to WV to help her aunt, who lived on a farm.

At the time I was born, we lived in town and both mom and dad had jobs, the first I remember was that mom kept "books" for several local businesses, a furniture store, a dry cleaners, and a taxi company were ones that I remember. Dad worked at the furniture store.

So I guess we weren't "poor", but we weren't rolling in cash either. We moved out of town to a small farm, and we supplemented the family income by growing a large garden, and I still remember mom "canning" just about everything that we grew, so that it would last through the winter.

Education was always considered a necessary expense. It was expected that we would go on to college, even if it meant making some sacrifices in other areas, as we had a better chance of prospering later in life if we did so.

Thanks for starting this thread, Billy, I don't think kids today have much idea of just how short money was in the "old days". Today there are so many government programs to help "poor" folks, so that many disadvantaged folks can carry on much better that back in the 1940s and 1950s.

Best Regards, Les
 
Last edited:
Jokes aside, my family didn't get electricity until I was 5 years old, 1949. We got indoor plumbing in 1958 when I was a freshman in high school. Most folks today, with iphones in hand, cannot grasp the concept. But I had a pony, a .22 Winchester single shot, and thousands of acres to roam. I didn't feel poor even though we ate our share of jack rabbits, carp, and home canned vegetables.
 
BC38 said:
Lunch was usually a baloney sandwich. . . Pinto beans, fried potatoes & onions with cornbread were staples too. The potatoes, onions, and pretty much all the fresh the vegetables we got were from the garden.
Click to expand...

This is making me hungry! Some of my favorite foods.
 
JSR III said:
I remember that we were so poor that dad's Lincoln Continental didn't have hub caps. :eek:
Click to expand...

My parents could not afford factory air conditioning in our 55 Oldsmobile Holiday.

We were so poor we watched black, and white tv.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

bigride
Awww, flitter.
Replies
26
Views
2K
sborg
sborg
A
History!
Replies
14
Views
740
snubbyfan
snubbyfan
Kiwi cop
Christmas Down Under
Replies
1
Views
342
LVSteve
LVSteve
ameridaddy
Memorial Day, 2026
Replies
12
Views
279
tlawler
tlawler
Ματθιας
Today, was a wierd day.
Replies
25
Views
2K
Golddollar
Golddollar

Latest posts

Back
Top