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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up farm poor like most in my community which had been cash poor for generations.  It wasn't the abject poverty many on this thread suffered.  But it's a different experience (and mentality) than what is typical on DCUM.  Food wasn't usually an issue and most people did not have AC (I actually didn't live in a place with it until I was in my mid 20s and living in DC).  It wasn't unusual for people to have unheated bedrooms and most kids I knew shared bedrooms. Ours were unheated and there were 3 of us to a bedroom.  Everyone worked from an early age - and a lot of it was hard work.  Lots of hand me downs and doing without, taking food to a neighbor who was struggling.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that when people did have birthday parties, gifts were NEVER opened at the party.  To do so might embarrass someone who couldn't afford to bring a gift or might invite comparison between gifts.  You invited someone to your party because you wanted their company.  You wouldn't want them to decline because they couldn't afford a present nor would you want them to have to choose between attending or spending money they didn't have.

I've posted a few times on the 'why don't you open presents at the party?' threads.  I'm appalled at at the obliviousness of some of the posters - people who think they know who's poor because they volunteer at the school and know who gets a FARM.  [/quote]

I am another who grew up on a farm and poor.  It's a different kind of poor.  I never went to any school events either because I went home and worked.  I fed animals before I went to school.  We were never hungry but we usually ate deer meat.  I could skin a squirrel by the time I was six.  And then cook it.  My grandmother, who lived on the farm next door, baked and cooked on a wood-burning kitchen stove.  we all heated the houses with coal we mined ourselves out of an exposed vein on the back 300 acres, with a pick and shovel we'd then dump in the tractor bucket and haul to the shed.  In potbellied stoves -- during cold snaps we'd all sleep in the kitchens around the stove in sleeping bags.  If I left a glass of water beside my bed in the winter, I could break ice out of it by morning.

my grandma got indoor plumbing in 1986.  My grandpa PaPaw was a hunchback and I was pretty scared of him -- he got that when a board fell off the scaffolding and onto him when he was roofing a house.  he was 86 at the time.

It's just a different way of life, growing up on a farm in Appalachia.  I feel very sorry for a lot of the other posters on this thread, they had it hard.  I actually really loved my childhood, it was very different but more like an adventure than a burden.  If I could go back I wouldn't change it.  I lived in DC for a while with all the benefits city life can confer and hated it.  I'm back on a farm, albeit a much nicer one with every modern convenience, and happy again.  I can't stand to live around so many people, it's crushing.[/quote]

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