re: Food and activities us OT Poors had growing up

White gravy over bread with chicken gizzards. Pinto beans over white bread. Fried bologna sandwiches were a staple.

That ain’t “super poor” brother

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After church we got a doz.donuts and doz. cinnamon rolls..50c a doz.each.

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oh damn! you reminded me of a GOOD ONE.

we would go to church hungry and grouchy from the ill-fitting clothes and after 'sunday school' we would RACE to all the adult classrooms..they had already left to go to the sanctuary and scour the rooms for leftover SHIPLEY DONUTS

we were like starving squirrels stuffing our faces with as many leftover donuts as we could find.

occasionally those assholes would put the carboard box in the trashcan in the corner of the room WITH DONUTS STILL INSIDE and we had no shame hitting the trash cans too! To be fair it was those little metal school trashcans so the boxes would bascially be sitting on top of them.

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Plain white bread was sandwich bread, hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and Texas toast all in one.

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eta nm, i missed it

our first 'real' vacation after the ramada inn was to gulf shores and i remember my mom and dad worrying for weeks about getting travellers checks.


true story; my dad got busted for speeding and the cop made him follow him to the station to pay. he came out to the car and my mom had to open the sacred 'amex travelers check' envelope and feed them to him to pay. i winched watching her hand over 20 after 20...basically our entire vacation savings.

cut our vacation short.

My mother grew up on a small farm in a northern state but the area was southern as hell. My grandparents were as poor as it gets but the food was always good since they grew most of it. Meat was either chicken (my moms responsibility growing up, including wringing the neck and plucking), fish (caught by my grandfather in the town pond), or squirrel or rabbit that my grandfather shot. Their quality life did improve gradually. It was a big deal to add a bathroom to the house, for the first years of visiting them an outhouse was the only option. And they added a window unit AC to their main bedroom so we all hung out in that room. The "washing machine" was an electric wringer attached to a wash tub. The phone was an ancient hand crank phone on a party line. They still had a fairly good radio that we listened to a lot, and they'd splurged to put in a 30 foot tall TV antenna so that we could watch He-Haw, Tennessee Football, and St. Louis Baseball. I doubt 100 people live in that town anymore and I haven't been in 20 years, but my brothers and I may watch the 2024 eclipse there since it is in the middle of the path.

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, you should find a way to make more money.

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Far less easily done in 1975 than in 2023

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Yep, and there was no such thing as credit cards to pay for anything a family needed or wanted back then.

Most of our parents and I'm certain our grandparents paid with cash and when it ran out, the family did without.

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when our dryer would go out growing up my mom didn't bat an eye and we'd move straight to the line in the backyard. made the clothes smell FANTASTIC but the towels always turned to sandpaper.

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Yeah, my grandmother never had a dryer. When we visited I usually ended up on clothes drying detail which was always tricky with frequent summer storms. I stayed clear of that electric wringer which scared the crap out of me. Back yard dried clothes do smell great.

cheese toast

is cinnamon toast poor?

mayonnaise sandwich

only got McDonalds on the first day we left for our yearly vacation

brought an ice chest on vacation with all of our food. ate in the back of the van

everything "reduced for quick sale"

"scrape the mold off. its fine!"

homemade Jams (when they were in style)

brand name clothes were always of a strange cut. like outlet store throwaways

rolling down the levee or sliding down on a carboard box

I used the team's baseball bat my entire life