FYI like grandpa used to do.....

[chickiebaby]

Hands down my fave post ever on BYC! I echo the member who said: tell us more stories!

And, yeah, you definitely need more chickens!

 

[Rufflemyfeathers]

They were little pellets abut may 3/4 inch long and fed to the pigs..what is a person to do when you are hungry?

A.J.'s :

Ruffle my feathers......

I would get hungry and couldn't get anything extra to eat as mom wouldn't let me so I would go down to my dads pig barn and he had big sacks of pig pellets and I feasted on them to quinch my hunger

what in the world is "pig pellets".. surely it does not mean..no it cant mean.. of course it cant mean what it seems to be????????

aj's​

 

[Rufflemyfeathers]

Right now the way things I would gladly go back to the times I spent as a child.. yes we had it hard at times but we grew up to appreciate things more if had to work for them..

I remember at Christmas we kids did not get a Christmas Present unless there were pecans on the trees to pick up off the ground..so about November we would start picking up big gunny sacks of them and my dad would go sell at the market and that is what my parents spent for our gifts and the Christmas meal on table..

Everyone has there story and it is so good to remember how it use to be..of course we can't go back but we can learn to appreciate what have..I am just happy to have those memories..

 

[Opa]

Quote:
And here is one of mine. When my oldest son was born I was in the Army stationed in Germany. Our total income per month was about $200. Needless to say money was tight. In order to insure that the baby had everything he needed we would look for ways to save money. Cutting back on our food budget was one of the few expeditures we could control. Of course beans were a staple in our diet, but so was chicken. We discovered that 1 box of Bisquick and 1 chicken would last at week. The trick to keep adding more water and then dumplings and not to eat the chicken until the end of the week. I'm here to tell that if you that when you wash a chicken that much there isn't much flavor left in the meat when you do eat it. Those washed chickens helped us get by and today when I sit down to eat I appreciate just how much I have. Surprizingly, I still like chicken and dumplings.

 

[andehens]

AJ you are a wonderful and insightful writer! I'm so glad I saw this post!

 

[Clay In Iowa]

Captivating ....

 

[Imp]

Great Stories! I can't say I've ever lacked for anything. Grew up with hard working parents who made sure my brother and I had better lives than they had. My worse childhood memory was losing a dime on the way to the store to buy ice cream.

But the stories they used to tell. Dad grew up rural out west- North Dakota. For years his bedroom was the bathtub, got only one meal a day and if he was hungry, he would jump a sugar beet freight train and eat till he was stuffed then jump off and walk home. Mom grew up ghetto NYC. Jamaica Plains to be exact with an abusive psycho alcoholic father. Most of her meals were just a slice of bread, on Sundays she would get 1 slice of bologna. Somehow I think the most trying times bring out the best character. At least in some people.

 

[Chicabee19]

I love these stories! They brought tears to my eyes. I have long wondered WHY somebody does not gather them together into book form before it is too late and all the story-tellers are gone.

We grew up fairly poor in the 60's, but us kids didn't know it. Looking at photos now I can see our pants were 3 inches too short, but they were clean.

I remember taking extra food from the other kids' lunch boxes in the coat-closet after lunch was over. I felt hungry most of my childhood, and I simply hated the food we had to eat - a very thin skin of the cheapest peanut butter and grape or strawberry jelly on 3 day old bread. I didn't know until I was 30 that you could pile on the peanut butter and jelly! Up 'til that time I avoided PB&J sandwiches like the plague. A friend made some once, and I dared myself to try it and see did I hate it still. It was delicious! Dripping jelly out the ends, there was so much in there!

Also in our old, greasy, folded-up and reused brown paper lunch sacks there was always the old, soft apple that made me gag, and sometimes Little Debi's cakes. All our friends and schoolmates had metal lunch boxes with real Hostess Cupcakes and Ding Dongs, meat and tomato and lettuce sandwiches! With mayo! We were so envious. We would beg our friends to trade with us, but hardly anyone ever did. Trading lunch items in the cafeteria was big in my day.

A very, extra special day was when we were given 50 cents or 75 cents to buy school lunch. All the rich kids bought school lunch every single day!, and laughed at the kids who brought sacks. There was a hierarchy - bought lunch, metal lunch box, brown paper sack - so we would hide ours in our coats so no one would notice.

At recess, schoolmates would be walking around with little bags of Cheetos, candy bars, big fresh juicy oranges... and I would sit on the steps and watch them eat. I remember on one occasion someone threw a whole orange into the big can near the door and I scooped it right out. On very rare occasions, somebody would share.

For breakfast was the all-time worst - oatmeal made by a nine-year-old (me). I was the oldest girl, so I started making breakfast for the four of us when I was 8. It was awful - thick, lumpy and cold. We weren't allowed to put stuff on it - just a little bit of sugar. Again, I did not have really good oatmeal with lots of butter, brown sugar or syrup, and cream until I was grown up. I avoided oatmeal like the plague until then, but now I enjoy it so much. When I first started eating it again, if it didn't have a lot of extra stuff on it, I would gag.

My oatmeal was sooo bad, I would go about finding ways to get rid of what was in my bowl every morning. I had my ways - go out to visit the rabbits in their cage, wander out where the dogs were laying, or get a huge mouthful and suddenly have to go to the bathroom real bad - when there, spit into the toilet and flush. Once my sister caught me doing this. She "told" on me, and I got a spanking. She was always; "ahhhm, I'm tellin!"

If it weren't for dinner, I probably would have starved to death. I sometimes would hide my awful sack lunch, and once our dad found it behind the couch. I would not admit it was mine (this was before he started writing our names on the sacks), so we all got spanked. Thank goodness we could eat spaghetti, chili, meatloaf, curry and rice and things like that for dinner - those really fill you up.

Once I was so hungry, I ate all the baby aspirin in the bathroom cabinet thinking they were candy.

One time I got up early and looked in the 'fridge. There was no milk, and having no milk was BAD. We would drink 2 8-ounce glasses as often as we could. If it weren't for milk, we would have starved. This was at an age when I had begun to think about God, so I went back to bed and prayed "God, please give us some milk before everyone else gets up". I truly believed He would be able to do it. Later when we all got up, there was a 10 gallon box of milk in the 'fridge, and for a long time I truly believed God had put it there. I was so amazed that He could do such a thing. Of course, now I know that my mom had sent dad down to the store before he went to work that morning, but because of that box of milk, I always talked to God and to Jesus every day - as if They were right there with me anytime I had something to to tell Them.

I think the results of the miracle of the box of milk was responsible for keeping me alive during some very dark days in my late teens/early twenties - I always had God to hang on to.

 

[Cason]

My grandparents lived during the Depression.. G'pa used to tell me ~ eating horses.. he said they're actually very good- I know they're a delicacy overseas.
Have you ever read the book "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan? I highly recommend reading it- especially in these tougher times.

 

[A.J.'s]

Thank you my friends. those post contain more validation than ive had in many years..
I told you al ready about my dads parents. Mammy and Pappy. Both were in their 60's w hen he died . That was old back then.
Since they had raised 11 children, all healthy and strong and most of them educated Im sure they were both quite tired.
But, they had strength left over for me. I was given to them several times before it "took". Meaning that she went away and stoppd causing trouble for the family. First time I was on her breast. IVe heard the stories about how I nursed Mammys hanging chin flaps to get to sleep. Its a sweet thought. She sure smelled good.
I never was one to eat much. But Mammy made a chocolate pie for my recess snack each day and I loved them so much. It was abouat the only thing Id eat all day and she sure didnt want me to leave the house without my little brown sack with my pie and another one to share.
OUr house sst on a little hill that had a tree lined "churt" driveway leading to the highway. Id say about 1000 feet and so beautiful even today its amazing to see the drive way as it circles around the hillside and the pasture land on each side of it is now used only for growing hay and a neighbor mows it for the hay. Keeping it green and beautiful all year.
I lived near the end of the run for our school bus and the bus would pass my house, turn around and then pick me up on the return trip. That gave me a good warning as to when the bus was coming when it would pass my house I knew I had about 10 minutes til it returned and picked me up on the way to school.
ONe day a cold one.. I was running to catch it and I noticed that the kids on the bus were all hanging out the windows and yelling cheers to me. I t hought it was to me anyway. I jumped up the steps to the bus and sat down breathless and then I had time to see just what the kids were cheering at.. There behind me about half way ran my Mammy. Her hair all tied up in a bun and tight as could be. All five foot three of her, that would be five foot six if not for the hunp on her back that gave way to toting all those kids she fed with her body for so many years. Her apron she had pulled up and waving it for attention as she trotted and yelled to the driver.. to "wait up wait up"!!!!
He put the bus out of gear and settled back for the wait, she boarded the bus as breathless as I had ever seen her and when her eyes found me, she came over and handed me the little bag of delight that she knew would fuel my day of learning and playing hop scotch at that little country school.
Food was readily available at my house and Mammy could cook up anything to make t good, but I know as an adult and after reviewing our life there on that little farm that had it not been for my dad's death in Korea, there would not have been so many chocolate pies dripping in butter and who knows where I would have been by the time I started school had I been left to my mothers figuring. My birth mother that is.. My Mother was that old woman running with all her might to feed me and to show her love for me in that delicious confection that she knew I loved so much.
Oh Thank you, my sweet Mammy for having the might to take on another one after the big job you did raising the first 11.