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Topic: Poor (10/25/04)
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TITLE: Memories of Childhood By John Lindsay 10/31/04 |
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reflected on the story about wealth and poverty in the 1950's.
Memories of my own childhood through those years surged back. We were definitely a
working class family, but poor? I'd never considered the question.
When I was born my parents were living in two rooms rented from Mother's aunt because
cheap family housing was hard to find in the baby boom years following World War II.
Eighteen months later they bought an old cottage on a site the family would occupy for the
next fifty years.
With four children to support by the time I was seven, Father's wages left no money for
luxuries. Mother sewed and often made us new clothes as birthday and Christmas gifts,
meeting two needs in one action.
Our home was simple, but roomy, with few appliances. A coal stove for cooking and
supplying hot water, with a coal gas burner to heat the kettle quickly in the morning. Fresh
vegetables from the garden and eggs from a few hens which provided meat when they were
too old to lay.
I was nearly ten when my parents bought their first car, a twenty year old Chevrolet, and
a teenager by the time we had a telephone. Television came even later, after I had left home
for university. Too late, I thought at the time.
Earlier generations had received little education but I finished high school, the first in the
family to do so. When university study was suggested, Father made it clear he couldn't afford
the fees so I signed up for government sponsored teacher training and supplemented my
income with farm work through the summer.
It was a carefree childhood in an era when we made our own fun. We played on the street
with few interruptions from passing cars, built huts and clambered boldly out to the end of a
wharf to pull fish from the cool waters of the southwest Pacific. Some activities would be
frowned on now. Today the town's trash is out of bounds but no-one stopped our scavenging
for trinkets and treasures among the smelly, smoky piles of cast-offs.
Yes, all in all, they are good memories. We knew we were loved. There was always food on
the table - simple, nourishing food. I learned to look after myself, cook, iron my clothes and
do an honest day's work. And I discovered the value of perseverance as I watched Father
devote more than ten years to building a new house around our old one.
If you considered our meagre bank balance, perhaps we were poor, but there are other ways
of reckoning wealth.