Did You Grow Up in the Middle Class?
In the most recent Leadership Reno County (LRC) class, we were asked the question in the title. I couldn't think whether I should raise my hand or not, so I lifted my hand off the table belatedly and half-heartedly. Afterward, I realized that even a half-hearted hand-raise was probably too much affirmative assent. By most measures, I grew up in a family too poor to be in the middle class. Why wasn't that more clear to me?
The question was posed in the middle of an exercise in which we had all read the same news account of a family with two children who were receiving public assistance (welfare). We noted the facts in the case, and then listed possible interpretations of the facts. All of the interpretations were measured, polite, and full of understanding--until one of the facilitators urged us to consider some more difficult interpretations. She pointed out that not all of us raised our hands in response to the "Middle Class" question, implying that some of us might have a perspective on this family's experience that the rest should hear. Then the visceral reactions began pouring out.
One person said she never knew her father, and had not been cared for by her mother, because she was on drugs. As a result, she had spent time in foster care, just as the woman in the story had. The woman in our class was furious at the way the couple in the story was "milking" the public assistance system.
Another person described trying to help his mother-in-law, whose furnace had quit during cold weather. The family had brought in space heaters and had begun to check into getting assistance for her to pay for a new furnace--so that she wouldn't have to take out a loan to pay for it. They knew that her limited income would make it difficult to pay back a loan. As soon as it became clear that the assistance was forthcoming, the woman took out a loan and scheduled the installation of a new furnace. The son-in-law saw in her actions an unappealing mix of negative attitudes and actions, probably centered on pride. Pride was probably driving both the reluctance to seek help and the desire to pay for it with borrowed money rather than "gifted" money.
In one of the above stories, the point being made by the storyteller was that some people are far too quick to take money from others, and the other storyteller was saying in effect that some people shouldn't be too proud to accept help from others when they need it.
Even before the class was over, my mind was churning with questions: How is "middle class" defined? What if those who define "middle class" have very different values from mine? Am I still obligated to accept another's definition of middle class? Is it important to know our socio-economic class? Are we capable of identifying our own class status? What is poverty? Is being poor and proud a good thing or a bad thing? Is poverty with shame better than poverty with pride?
When I visited Lincoln school recently, I heard statistics that placed most of the students in the poverty category. Seventy per cent qualified for free lunches. So did my family, although we didn't know it until the principal quietly informed my parents and urged them to use the benefit. Forty per cent at Lincoln qualified for free breakfast and weekend meals too. If the program had already existed, I suspect that my parental family might have qualified for that too. True, the food was often simple, with little variety. Bread and milk soup for supper--hot in the winter--with the bread toasted, and cold in the summer, with sugar and fruit added. Eggs and hot cereal for breakfast, summer and winter. Repeat ad infinitum. Much of our food was produced on our farm, and some of the baked goods we ate came from a big pile on the floor of Nisly Brothers' shed.
In the house, we had water piped to two spigots, one in the bathroom sink and one in the kitchen sink. We could "skin the cat" (a gymnastics move) on the pipe that drained the kitchen sink and protruded from the side of the house. The bathroom drain pipe was too low to the ground to hang from by our hands or feet--as required for skinning the cat. Four bedrooms held beds for twelve people. The upstairs bedrooms were frigid during the winter and sometimes so hot in the summer that we used a fine water mist from a spray bottle in order to cool off enough to sleep.
My paternal grandparents (Kansas) had twelve children born to them between 1921 and 1937. The Great Depression hit smack in the middle of those years, and the Dust Bowl marked the end of that time period. A "mawt" (maid) who worked in their home described them as being "so poor." Yet, when I asked the group of siblings in my dad's family (during a memories-sharing time at a reunion) if they felt poor while growing up, they said "not really; we were much like the people around us." I guess their economic status wasn't clear to them either.
I remember that in high school another girl once liked something I was wearing and asked where I got it. I answered honestly, "Salvation Army," at which point she promptly apologized for asking. I thought that was strange.
I also remember the year when our neighbor Johnny Davies showed up at our door during the Christmas season with a big box of wonderful food. Even before he left, we exclaimed happily over it as we lifted each item out of the box. When my dad asked "Where did you get this?" Johnny said, "I thought you weren't supposed to ask about things like that."
Dad thanked him for reminding him of that. We children never suspected what my parents must have known--that we were one of the recipients of the Partridge Church people's efforts to remember the poor during the Christmas season.
I believe that our family's economic status was not clear to me for several reasons. Primarily, we simply didn't spend a lot of time comparing ourselves with others. Also, since we lived in a fairly tightly-knit community among people whose lifestyle was similar to ours, no huge and obvious differences existed. Others also wore tennis shoes to school even after they had developed a few holes. Certainly, most others had an indoor toilet, and we didn't, and some of our friends routinely got money to spend at the concession stand at ball games, and we usually didn't. If we did, we never failed to choose the items carefully so that we could easily divide some of it among our younger siblings after we got home (shoestring licorice was perfect for this).
We never saw possessions as a measure of worth. I'm not sure how this happened, but I wonder if we didn't actually have a slightly negative impression of being wealthy--as though it revealed misplaced priorities or character flaws. Maybe it was partly because so little of what my parents invested their time in resulted in a prompt economic benefit. Yet we knew that what they did had value. My dad never was a salaried minister, but he spent a great deal of time in pastoral work. My mother extended hospitality to others far beyond the call of duty, with no financial reward. On the farm, none of the crops brought in money until they could be harvested and sold. Animals had to be fed a long time before they could be taken to market. Delayed or intangible as they were, these responsible behaviors did produce rewards--as we came gradually to understand.
I don't know how this happened either, but somehow we were able to view things that came into our possession with gratitude for God's provision, whether it came through a great find at Salvation Army or a box of food at Christmas. Too proud to receive these good gifts? That would have been unthinkably ungrateful to our Great Provider. The perspective of gratitude made it possible to receive help without shame.
Everything I'm remembering here elevates my parents' roles in our family life another notch. I marvel at the resourcefulness and wisdom and strength with which they met their challenges. Among the gifts they gave us was leading by example in staying curious and engaged in the world of books, nature, and people. Consequently we faced the world outside our home with what I think was a healthy measure of confidence and enthusiasm. If we chased anything, it was knowledge, mastery of skills, and opportunities to serve--not money. These were priceless habits we learned from our parents.
Our household was not particularly well-organized and our relationships were not always without friction, but by and large, our home was happy, and dysfunction was held at bay. What we did have was a bedrock of faith in a loving, merciful, and just God, and we had an Instruction Book and a faith community to help us learn how to live. This surely carried all of us in ways that we will never understand on this side of heaven. Measured against the wealth of being part of the kingdom of God, being part of the middle class looks like a diminished and meager status.
.
The question was posed in the middle of an exercise in which we had all read the same news account of a family with two children who were receiving public assistance (welfare). We noted the facts in the case, and then listed possible interpretations of the facts. All of the interpretations were measured, polite, and full of understanding--until one of the facilitators urged us to consider some more difficult interpretations. She pointed out that not all of us raised our hands in response to the "Middle Class" question, implying that some of us might have a perspective on this family's experience that the rest should hear. Then the visceral reactions began pouring out.
One person said she never knew her father, and had not been cared for by her mother, because she was on drugs. As a result, she had spent time in foster care, just as the woman in the story had. The woman in our class was furious at the way the couple in the story was "milking" the public assistance system.
Another person described trying to help his mother-in-law, whose furnace had quit during cold weather. The family had brought in space heaters and had begun to check into getting assistance for her to pay for a new furnace--so that she wouldn't have to take out a loan to pay for it. They knew that her limited income would make it difficult to pay back a loan. As soon as it became clear that the assistance was forthcoming, the woman took out a loan and scheduled the installation of a new furnace. The son-in-law saw in her actions an unappealing mix of negative attitudes and actions, probably centered on pride. Pride was probably driving both the reluctance to seek help and the desire to pay for it with borrowed money rather than "gifted" money.
In one of the above stories, the point being made by the storyteller was that some people are far too quick to take money from others, and the other storyteller was saying in effect that some people shouldn't be too proud to accept help from others when they need it.
Even before the class was over, my mind was churning with questions: How is "middle class" defined? What if those who define "middle class" have very different values from mine? Am I still obligated to accept another's definition of middle class? Is it important to know our socio-economic class? Are we capable of identifying our own class status? What is poverty? Is being poor and proud a good thing or a bad thing? Is poverty with shame better than poverty with pride?
When I visited Lincoln school recently, I heard statistics that placed most of the students in the poverty category. Seventy per cent qualified for free lunches. So did my family, although we didn't know it until the principal quietly informed my parents and urged them to use the benefit. Forty per cent at Lincoln qualified for free breakfast and weekend meals too. If the program had already existed, I suspect that my parental family might have qualified for that too. True, the food was often simple, with little variety. Bread and milk soup for supper--hot in the winter--with the bread toasted, and cold in the summer, with sugar and fruit added. Eggs and hot cereal for breakfast, summer and winter. Repeat ad infinitum. Much of our food was produced on our farm, and some of the baked goods we ate came from a big pile on the floor of Nisly Brothers' shed.
In the house, we had water piped to two spigots, one in the bathroom sink and one in the kitchen sink. We could "skin the cat" (a gymnastics move) on the pipe that drained the kitchen sink and protruded from the side of the house. The bathroom drain pipe was too low to the ground to hang from by our hands or feet--as required for skinning the cat. Four bedrooms held beds for twelve people. The upstairs bedrooms were frigid during the winter and sometimes so hot in the summer that we used a fine water mist from a spray bottle in order to cool off enough to sleep.
My paternal grandparents (Kansas) had twelve children born to them between 1921 and 1937. The Great Depression hit smack in the middle of those years, and the Dust Bowl marked the end of that time period. A "mawt" (maid) who worked in their home described them as being "so poor." Yet, when I asked the group of siblings in my dad's family (during a memories-sharing time at a reunion) if they felt poor while growing up, they said "not really; we were much like the people around us." I guess their economic status wasn't clear to them either.
I remember that in high school another girl once liked something I was wearing and asked where I got it. I answered honestly, "Salvation Army," at which point she promptly apologized for asking. I thought that was strange.
I also remember the year when our neighbor Johnny Davies showed up at our door during the Christmas season with a big box of wonderful food. Even before he left, we exclaimed happily over it as we lifted each item out of the box. When my dad asked "Where did you get this?" Johnny said, "I thought you weren't supposed to ask about things like that."
Dad thanked him for reminding him of that. We children never suspected what my parents must have known--that we were one of the recipients of the Partridge Church people's efforts to remember the poor during the Christmas season.
I believe that our family's economic status was not clear to me for several reasons. Primarily, we simply didn't spend a lot of time comparing ourselves with others. Also, since we lived in a fairly tightly-knit community among people whose lifestyle was similar to ours, no huge and obvious differences existed. Others also wore tennis shoes to school even after they had developed a few holes. Certainly, most others had an indoor toilet, and we didn't, and some of our friends routinely got money to spend at the concession stand at ball games, and we usually didn't. If we did, we never failed to choose the items carefully so that we could easily divide some of it among our younger siblings after we got home (shoestring licorice was perfect for this).
We never saw possessions as a measure of worth. I'm not sure how this happened, but I wonder if we didn't actually have a slightly negative impression of being wealthy--as though it revealed misplaced priorities or character flaws. Maybe it was partly because so little of what my parents invested their time in resulted in a prompt economic benefit. Yet we knew that what they did had value. My dad never was a salaried minister, but he spent a great deal of time in pastoral work. My mother extended hospitality to others far beyond the call of duty, with no financial reward. On the farm, none of the crops brought in money until they could be harvested and sold. Animals had to be fed a long time before they could be taken to market. Delayed or intangible as they were, these responsible behaviors did produce rewards--as we came gradually to understand.
I don't know how this happened either, but somehow we were able to view things that came into our possession with gratitude for God's provision, whether it came through a great find at Salvation Army or a box of food at Christmas. Too proud to receive these good gifts? That would have been unthinkably ungrateful to our Great Provider. The perspective of gratitude made it possible to receive help without shame.
Everything I'm remembering here elevates my parents' roles in our family life another notch. I marvel at the resourcefulness and wisdom and strength with which they met their challenges. Among the gifts they gave us was leading by example in staying curious and engaged in the world of books, nature, and people. Consequently we faced the world outside our home with what I think was a healthy measure of confidence and enthusiasm. If we chased anything, it was knowledge, mastery of skills, and opportunities to serve--not money. These were priceless habits we learned from our parents.
Our household was not particularly well-organized and our relationships were not always without friction, but by and large, our home was happy, and dysfunction was held at bay. What we did have was a bedrock of faith in a loving, merciful, and just God, and we had an Instruction Book and a faith community to help us learn how to live. This surely carried all of us in ways that we will never understand on this side of heaven. Measured against the wealth of being part of the kingdom of God, being part of the middle class looks like a diminished and meager status.
.
posted by Miriam Iwashige at
5:31 PM
3 Comments:
Miriam, I'm thankful you're sharing your thoughts, your memories, with others. I can tell that as a child you chased knowledge and the word of God. In reference to the Great Depression, my mom and dad used to tell me, "We were poor but didn't know it because everyone we knew was in the same boat." Or, "We only had dirt in our pockets," I seldom hear those expressions anymore since the survivors of the Dust Bowl/Dirty Thirties have mostly died off. Today, it's difficult to imagine someone not knowing they are economically poor if they are exposed to any form of mass communication. The messages bombarding us to buy things so we can feel good are relentless. No surprise that Leadership Reno County has you in deep thought! Jim
By
Jim Potter, at 3/04/2019
Thanks for the comment, Jim. I started writing this before your talk at the Arlington library on memoir writing, and finished it afterward. It was only then that I began to see this topic as a worthy memoir subject, and it helped me know how to finish the post.
I'm glad to hear that you were able to connect something in my experience with your own experience. I had never heard the "nothing but dirt in our pockets" expression, but it resonates with me.
Also, I had not connected ignorance about our economic condition with a lack of exposure to mass communication, but that was certainly the case. Seeing this helps me understand how the mindset of those who come after us is likely to be different from our own--because of the nearly inescapable "bombardment" factor.
By
Miriam Iwashige, at 3/04/2019
Yes, the constant bombardment of media messages is changing us. If we're constantly comparing our economic condition to others, then I can only hope we'll also find time to count our blessings. I can see it now, the Old Order Amish giving mindfulness seminars by permitting the English to clean out their barns! The actual phrase I remember hearing from my parents was, "We were so poor, dirt was the only thing we had in our pockets."
By
Jim Potter, at 3/06/2019
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