So many of these stories bring back memories. My Dad had grown up during the depression with no father. He was a city kid and learned a lot of survival techniques. He was the oldest of 3 kids, with his mother working way too many hours as a salad chef for one of the big hotels in Milwaukee. Food and clothing (and rent payments) were always issues in their home. Dumpster diving was honed to a fine art. But education was set as a high priority to gain a higher spot in life. He built his own radios from scraps and used that knowledge to become an amateur radio operator and then a commercial radio operator in the CCCs, and the Army, then after WW2 he used the GI bill to get a University degree in electrical engineering.
So us 3 boys grew up under the shadow of the depression, but with a high respect for education. As a university student in the early 60s, I worked many part time jobs (maybe 30 total), expanding my knowledge of the working world and learning that working for an hourly wage is a ticket to continued near poverty. So I learned how to contract jobs.
But I'll never forget the near poverty that my brothers and I grew up with and were struggling to escape. My first car was a 1955 Plymouth (last year of the 6V electrical system). Dad would not allow us to plug in an engine heater because it would raise his electric bill. He had survived all his years without a warmed up auto engine, so we had to also. The old Plymouth flathead 6 had a somewhat decent battery, but the engine was so worn that it could not turn it over fast enough to start on the frigid Minnesota mornings. So my solution was to bring the battery into the house every night to keep it warm and thus the car would start. The worn engine allowed the pistons to bang against the upper cylinder wear ridges when driven too fast, like passing a truck on 2 lane road. So I bought my first set of Craftsman sockets when the pistons broke the upper rings and sent them through the exhaust pipes. I bought 2 new pistons with rings from Mont Wards, used a friend's ridge reamer to get rid of the ridges, and installed the 2 new pistons and a new head gasket. The engine ran fine, so I quickly sold it and bought a 58 Plymouth for $50. It had a lot of rust, but a 12V electrical system so it would start on most winter days. It had the same 230 cu in flathead 6 which meant a lot of clutch slipping to get it going. So I learned how to replace clutch discs without a tranny jack in 3 to 4 hours total on a Friday night. I needed the car again for the weekend jobs of being an industrial spy for Conoco Oil, and being a church janitor Sunday night. If the oil company job was slack, I painted apartments for some apartment company. That paid $15 for a full 2 bedroom apt, and I'd get that done in 10 hours.
Hundreds of more stories related to survival and near poverty, but I'll save them for the grandkids.
The interesting point (I think) is the big variety of survival skills and techniques that were developed by farm kids, city kids, and suburban kids. In all social strata there were people who were well off and others who were scratching hard to survive. My real eye opener was a full summer that I worked on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota. The kids who grew up there really had intense poverty, and probably no dream of escaping it.
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Today's Featured Article - The Day Mom Drove the 8N - by Brian Browning. My Dad was wanting to put in a garden but couldn't operate the 8N and handle the old horse drawn plow he had found and rigged up to use with the tractor. Well, he decided to go get Mom out of the house and have her drive the tractor while he walked behind the plow. You got to understand that while my Mom is a hard worker who will always help whenever she can... she had never operated farm machinery before that day. Dad got her out there, explained how the clutch was the same as in our o
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