Some memories from childhood...

[Shawn]

The current financial crisis has me thinking about some of the little things I had forgotten, which for some reason now seem very important.

The setting: small town in Hardy County West Virginia, population of under 300, early 70s, I'm being raised by my Grandparents.

1. The houses and property are modest, but they are paid for (probably a long time before I was born).

2. We are sustained primarily by my Grandfather's Real Estate office, but in a town that small there aren't many customers.

3. The cars are old, the furniture is worn and patched (the couch in the living room was rescued from the dump 20 years earlier)

4. The clothes are purchased at thrift stores and the little general store downtown.

5. The TV is at least a decade old and B&W, we get 3 channels, the stereo is probably of the same vintage.

6. Most of the food is grown in the garden out back, my Grandmother and I spend most of our day working it.

7. Once every few months we wash out all the returnable bottles and take them to the grocery store for cash, my Grandmother usually lets me purchase a treat with some of the money.

8. There really isn't any money for toys, so my main toy is an old push lawn mower that my grandfather removed the engine from so I could push it around the yard and pretend to mow. My Grandmother gives me old broken appliances to tear apart and inspect the inner workings when they break.

9. We eat every meal together at the dinner table.

10. We play board games (Scrabble, Monopoly, Sorry) and read from books. The local PBS station plays old movies at night, my Grandmother lets me stay up late and watch them with her sometimes, mostly musicals.

11. There isn't any money for anything frivolous, so I'm encouraged to use my imagination, draw, play outside.

12. There are no credit cards, anything requiring to be purchased is either paid for in cash or done without.

13. The majority of our neighbors are poor as well, my Grandmother makes food for them when they are sick or cannot afford it. My Grandfather might give someone a ride to the doctor, or take them to the grocery store.

14. I've never heard the word stress, my Grandmother works hard all day in the house and garden but never complains.

15. But most importantly we're happy. We have each other. I feel secure and loved. Life is very simple, but very good.

I don't have anything important or philosophical to say, but it's a nice little tapestry of memories from a world very different from this one. Maybe there's a lesson in there as well.

Hope you didn't mind me sharing.

[sidewinder]

Yeah Shawn - It's absolutely true that when it comes to the crunch you don't need too much to sustain you and live a happy life. Kids weather this stuff pretty well anyway and will put up with pretty well anything as long as they are fed and cared for. I remember making my own toys with paper and glue etc. back in the early 70s and was more than happy doing it too. Even made my own comic books (an absolute hoot that was !). In fact it was WAY more creative than Nintendo, X-Box etc.

There was a striking documentary on TV the other night first broadcast in 1973 about a day in the life of a Northern English city (Sheffield, as it turns out). Just a typical day - showing births, deaths, marriages, policeman at work, people toiling at steelworks, milkmen delivering milk etc.

What I found striking was the film of a 65 year old guy at his last day at work in one of the numerous steel plants in that city. He'd put in 50 continuous years at the coal face (literally) from 1923 and his house was a tiny 2-up 2 down still with an outside WC ! The MD at the company he worked came out of his ivory tower to utter a few words to the camera and actually splashed out big time to award him a set of cutlery too (first time it was done - say no more ). Yet he appeared amazingly content with his lot - astonishingly so considering the years of toil and danger at the foundry. A lesson for us all there, I think.

Edited February 8, 2009 by sidewinder

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks for that Shawn.

In my experience, the working classes have limited objectives; the middle classes place no theoretical limits on their objectives. It's a damn sight easier to be happy if your objectives are modest.

If it makes people realise that it isn't compulsory to have boundless ambition, maybe this depression will be a good thing in the long run.

MG

[kinuta]

Nice post, Shawn. Money isn't everything. I'm actually nearer to MG's age and grew up in Sheffield, mentioned in Sidewinder's post so I felt I should add a comment.

My memories up to the age of ten are-

gaslights, horses and carts , trams, bombed out buildings and piles of rubble, dirt. One room down, two rooms up, an outside toilet, no bath, we had the option of a tin bath filled with kettles or the public baths up the street. Radio playing all the time, no tv until I was about eight or nine, no telephone.no garden of course. Going shopping with my mother , ration books, shops with pneumatic tubes for the billing and cashier, sawdust on the floor. Everybody very happy and friendly,lots of jokes and laughter, lots of pals, playing outside all the time in all kinds of weather, building dens in wrecked houses. no toys that I can remember, new clothes once a year. Parents always broke, something that I wasn't aware of at the time. A special treat about once a year was lunch in a restaurant. Our one luxury was the cinema, we lived three doors from the picture house and were regular visitors. hence my lifelong love of films. I can relate to the steelman mentioned in Sidewinder's post, I knew a great many people like him.

[medjuck]

Great post. My father was basically a refugee in Europe for the first 10 years of his life (1911-21) running from the Cossacks and various armies (ironically the Germans saved his family during WW1), but he used to say he had his mother and her family and despite everything that was all that mattered. (His father had left for Canada before he was born and for various reasons they couldn't join him, so my Dad didn't meet his dad until he was 10!)

[Christiern]

My childhood memories run the gamut from luxury to poverty, depending on who my mother was married to (there were four actuals and as many close-but-no-rings). Looking back, I think that ping pong of lifestyle extremes was beneficial to me. I came out with very little formal education, but I probably learned more from experiencing it rather than reading about it. Later in life, when I was on my own and my situation went from have to need, the joy or trauma fazed me less, for I had already been there.

[sidewinder]

Nice post, Shawn. Money isn't everything. I'm actually nearer to MG's age and grew up in Sheffield, mentioned in Sidewinder's post so I felt I should add a comment.

My memories up to the age of ten are-

gaslights

Some of the streets I remember in the 60s/early 70s were still lit by gas and were cobbled. In fact my dad converted the first house I ever lived in from gas to electric light. I can still picture the gas mantle fittings in situ on the neighbour's wall - I used to bash the crap out of their piano !

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

[kinuta]

Yeah, right. I forgot the handful of cold gravel.

[Cliff Englewood]

Yeah, right. I forgot the handful of cold gravel.

Or even,

:blush:

[connoisseur series500]

Very good post, Shawn. Everybody has a story, and I like to read them!

[Shawn]

Thanks again for letting me share my random thoughts.

One other nice little note:

My Grandmother is still alive, still in the same house I grew up in, and the house is still free & clear.

[sal]

Thank you for the nice post Shawn. It got me thinking about my childhood too, and brought a tear to my eye. I miss those days. Having lost my job recently as well, I've been doing alot more thinking about my childhood than I used to.

[sidewinder]

Yeah, right. I forgot the handful of cold gravel.

'You were lucky..'

[Jim Alfredson]

LUXURY!

[connoisseur series500]

Thank you for the nice post Shawn. It got me thinking about my childhood too, and brought a tear to my eye. I miss those days. Having lost my job recently as well, I've been doing alot more thinking about my childhood than I used to.

I think we think back to our beginnings whenever times get rough. I guess it's a way of reinforcing who we are and what we believe in. I tend to do the same thing too.

[jazzbo]

I have to say. . . I hardly ever think about my childhood. I may think about some of the experiences I had in Africa and touring Europe now and then, mostly years 12 to 16, but I don't think back and remember earlier than that often at all.

I tend to think of my adult life. . .especially starting with my first serious relationship with Susan, starting in 1980. . . for some reason my life and my memory really came alive and comes alive surrounding my romantic life and experiences with women.

Edited February 10, 2009 by jazzbo

[GA Russell]

Lon, if my memories were limited to my experiences with women, I'd kill myself!

[Shawn]

Lon, if my memories were limited to my experiences with women, I'd kill myself!

Yep. That's probably why I'm flashing back to childhood.

[Jazzmoose]

Wow. Hardy County West Virginia must have been a lot like Long County Georgia in many ways. Although I'm a bit jealous of that third channel you guys had; we didn't have UHF, and the ABC affiliate out of Savannah was on 22 if I remember right.

Just what I need: more help falling into a midlife crisis. I'm not sure what to do; I'm not that big on blondes, and convertables never appealed to me...

[jazzbo]

Lon, if my memories were limited to my experiences with women, I'd kill myself!

Well, with one exception, I've had very happy experiences with women, and I learned quite a bit from that one bad choice. I had a happy and eventful childhood, but for some reason I don't have to revisit it in memory often. There was in fact a distinct change in me in my adult life, which was mainly spent away from my family, and maybe I'm trapped, contentedly, in THAT "me."

Anyway, I'm 53 and I think what age we are plays a factor here. And how our childhood was, probably.

Edited February 10, 2009 by jazzbo

[Niko]

funny, i never saw such a significant break in my life between childhood and later... (though lately i feel my childhood is really over); those three relationships certainly are central in my life (though the first one with susan i don't understand anymore and look back to the least) but i always felt to some extent i first became a certain person and then got involved in a relationship that fit... the version of myself i find most impressive is when i was 19-22 or so, somehow i feel i already knew most of the stuff i know now though mostly from books... by now i've lived through some of it as well which makes me feel a lot less wise and wasn't too appealing either... but after all a lot of what was important at 13 still is... say, most of the books that are important now i would have liked back then as well i am pretty certain... and the first sentence i ever spoke ("the hat i take, just in case, i think") still is very much who i am today;

[jostber]

Great description in your story, Shawn. I dig those vibes. Money is not everything, more close to a dead end for some. It might be practical to have much, but it's nothing like the real touch of an experience and a good memory.

[Shawn]

The reason those memories stick in my mind so clearly is because when I was 5 I went to live with my Mother and her new husband, which started 9 years of utter hell. So those memories of that house in West Virginia are like a life raft in a shark filled sea of childhood memories.

[catesta]

The current financial crisis has me thinking about some of the little things I had forgotten, which for some reason now seem very important.

The setting: small town in Hardy County West Virginia, population of under 300, early 70s, I'm being raised by my Grandparents.

1. The houses and property are modest, but they are paid for (probably a long time before I was born).

2. We are sustained primarily by my Grandfather's Real Estate office, but in a town that small there aren't many customers.

3. The cars are old, the furniture is worn and patched (the couch in the living room was rescued from the dump 20 years earlier)

4. The clothes are purchased at thrift stores and the little general store downtown.

5. The TV is at least a decade old and B&W, we get 3 channels, the stereo is probably of the same vintage.

6. Most of the food is grown in the garden out back, my Grandmother and I spend most of our day working it.

7. Once every few months we wash out all the returnable bottles and take them to the grocery store for cash, my Grandmother usually lets me purchase a treat with some of the money.

8. There really isn't any money for toys, so my main toy is an old push lawn mower that my grandfather removed the engine from so I could push it around the yard and pretend to mow. My Grandmother gives me old broken appliances to tear apart and inspect the inner workings when they break.

9. We eat every meal together at the dinner table.

10. We play board games (Scrabble, Monopoly, Sorry) and read from books. The local PBS station plays old movies at night, my Grandmother lets me stay up late and watch them with her sometimes, mostly musicals.

11. There isn't any money for anything frivolous, so I'm encouraged to use my imagination, draw, play outside.

12. There are no credit cards, anything requiring to be purchased is either paid for in cash or done without.

13. The majority of our neighbors are poor as well, my Grandmother makes food for them when they are sick or cannot afford it. My Grandfather might give someone a ride to the doctor, or take them to the grocery store.

14. I've never heard the word stress, my Grandmother works hard all day in the house and garden but never complains.

15. But most importantly we're happy. We have each other. I feel secure and loved. Life is very simple, but very good.

I don't have anything important or philosophical to say, but it's a nice little tapestry of memories from a world very different from this one. Maybe there's a lesson in there as well.

Hope you didn't mind me sharing.

Shawn, I think there is a lesson in there.

I always wonder how much better financially we would all be without the added expenses of present day technology and luxuries.