I’ve been seeing a lot of shit about “the refugees couldn’t leave because they were so poor”, even seeing one site (scalzi) where they painted a sorry picture of how nobody understands what it’s like to be poor. No, I won’t link to it, it’s horsecrap.
Heres’ the thing. I’ve been broke. I grew up broke. When I was growing up, dad worked, mom worked. They didn’t both work because they wanted to have extra money to play with, they worked to make ends meet, which we barely did. They both worked, and dad worked a lot of long, hard hours, and his health was never good, because he wanted to do better. He wanted to make sure his fathers hospital bills got paid. Dad wanted to make sure his brothers and sisters had food in their bellies and roofs over their heads. Mom worked so we could go to catholic schools and get a decent education, as the local schools in the 60’s had already begun to go to hell. Dad drove a truck all the time, not because it was cool, because back then it was not, but because he was always helping someone with some project or another.

We ate well. We did so because mom carried a purse heavy with coupons everywhere she went. Because we always had a garden, and when we could buy produce cheap, in season,. we’d buy like crazy and cook and can until we all sweated pounds off. Dad would stand with the pantry door open and look at the rows and rows of canned green beans, tomatos, pears, peaches, assess how well we’d fare that winter. We bought eggs for pennies a dozen from a local farmer, picked them from under the chickens themselves, candled them in his basement. We brought our own egg cartons because the farmer charged a nickel for each paper mache carton.

We wore clothes with patches. Everyone did those days. Shit, I remember a kid whose pants were more patch than pants. I was especially hard on knees and butts, and I’d get jeans so tough and hard (to play in) that they chafed my balls something awful.By the time I outgrew them, they had just worn enough to be comfortable. I had shoes to go to school/church in, that had to be polished every week on saturday night, and shoes to play in, that were usually last years school shoes, pinched and tight and crudely re-soled by dad.

Dad worked side gigs when he could for extra cash, sometimes helped some farmer with haying in exchange for a side of beef. He hunted, a couple of shells he reloaded time and time again, walking afield with two shells and as often coming back with four or five quail.

When gramma moved in with us, mom & dad moved to a downstairs bedroom. Dad bought about forty doors from a local demolition project for next to nothing, I think he got them all for $10. He used the doors to make the walls of the basement bedroom, put down carpet, and stapled up ceiling tiles. He and mom slept down there in the cool basement because it didn’t need air conditioning, and he could sleep better in summer when the days at Ford sweated the life out of the strongest men. Anyway, gramma lived with us for several years- until she died, in fact, in our tiny bathroom, a grabber on the throne. She was the built-in babysitter, allowing mom to work and pay the bills. Gramma cooked but had no other responsabilities and paid nothing to be there, in fact dad always made sure Gramma had a little cash in her pocket.

We lived in a house that probably should have been burned down, we got it for a song, and dad worked at night trying to make it as liveable and nice as possible; mom cleaned it incessantly, even through home improvement projects- “just because you’re broke don’t mean you have to be filthy.”

In 1967 we had a blizzard that paralyzed the region and shut most of the utilities down. The snow covered our cars. The snow covered some homes. Our furnace was a gravity gas, which still worked, so we were warm, and we always had lanterns and candles, so we could see. It didn’t occur to us we were in any trouble, and we weren’t.

Dad went around the neighborhood and made sure everyone was ok. Climbed up on roofs to make sure chimneys were clear. Tunnelled through snowdrifts big enough to bury an oceangoing ship. Nobody paid him, nobody suggested a plan. Helping yourself and your neighbors IS the preparedness plan, the only one that matters. No government aid ever came our way.

I have a lot of friends who are in the process of crawling out of the barrel of brokeness. Some are fighting a long struggle. Some may never make it. They fight anyway, because striving to go on is the only way to live that is not utterly pointless. I also know people who expect it to be done for them, by the government, by family, by any method other than the sweat of their own brows.

I have done OK for myself. I am trying to raise my daughter with a sense that striving is important, to make better, to do better, to be better. I may not have a load of cash, I don’t have a savings account as such. But I do OK.

If being poor means you can’t do anything because the government (or some other entity) doesn’t fix you and make it all better, then thank God I’ve never been poor.