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I found success. I probably wouldn't today.
I found success. I probably wouldn't today.
December 4, 2017 · by myronbuck
By most measures, I am successful. But it wasn’t necessarily going to be so. As a precursor to my main point, let me share my life story, in brief. You’ll see why.
My family roots come from hardscrabble New England stock. No one was wealthy, everyone back to the Mayflower worked hard to get by, never amassing huge tracts of land or rising to own large businesses…we were working class, and the Great Depression made us Working Class poor. When he was 17, my dad lied about his age to enlist (as many did) to escape the looming poverty that hung over our family, and spent the next 25 years in the military. I was born when he was stationed overseas during his 5th or 6th year of service.
Growing up, I remember being told that I was going to go to college so much it became a mantra. My dad saw that as an escape from our family’s destiny of rural poverty, but I had no idea how to achieve it: no one in my family history….NO one…had ever been to college. Like so many other kids, I was unaware of the challenges my parents or grandparents had faced making their way through life, as I lived in the protected, provided world of being an Air Force brat. So when Dad retired and followed his agrarian dream to rural Maine, I arrived in this small town, born in Japan, having lived around the world, like some creature from outer space.
Dad worked odd jobs as much as he could but there was not much available in the realm of full-time work in rural Maine. He ended up leveraging the GI Bill to start undergrad studies at the state University about 60 miles away, which necessitated him living apart from the family. It also meant he did not work. We did what we could…hauled trash, raked blueberries, did manual labor, pitched hay, combed harvested potato fields, sold crafts….but if it were not for Food Stamps and other forms of federal aid, we would certainly have spiraled downward into permanent rural poverty. As it was, free school lunches and welfare assistance for my mom enabled us to have a somewhat normal life….’normal’ for rural Maine. We used a wood stove for heat (I could not have anything liquid in my bedroom at night in the winter as it would freeze solid), actually dug up the topsoil in our back yard and sold it to make ends meet one year, we raised chickens, pigs and a cow for food (I used to eat the corn meal mush that we heated up for the pigs in midwinter for my own breakfast, right out of the metal pail sitting on the stove), hunted deer to fill the freezer, drove third- and fourth-hand beater cars, wore clothes until they were in tatters, and made do.
I was anything but a successful student. Caught up in the world of feeling misplaced and insecure, I struggled with my classes and with fitting in, and my grades reflected that. But in my Freshman year, someone recognized my potential and enrolled me in a summer program called Upward Bound. It was a federally funded program designed specifically to encourage rural poor kids with college potential from families who had never attended college to be successful in HS and go on to further education. This program was an effort to break the poverty cycle, and it worked on me. I found my stride, developed confidence and for the first time I realized that attending college was not only possible, it was likely.
I got admitted to the state university near my home, and after a rough start because of my immaturity, I found the skills and strength to achieve. Tuition and housing was considerably more than I could ever afford (I had a monthly income during the HS years from money I earned during the summers at UB….of $5 a month), so I qualified for federal aid. The school would load me up with student loans, but fearful of debt, each fall I would go to the Financial Aid office and ask them to convert them to Work Study money. This was money laid aside for me to earn, tax free (it was student aid, which was not considered taxable income). Using Work Study funds, I slowly worked my way through my undergraduate degree, taking out small loans when necessary for large expenses (such as books, or first/last/damage deposits on apartments). These loans were tax-deferred and at low tax rates, so I emerged only $4000 in debt and with a BA, With Honors. I paid off my student loans in time, without defaulting, and started on my career path, threading my way through those lean early years until I developed a resume and marketable credentials.
Since then, and after a long adventurous life, I have become a successful International School teacher. I’m debt-free, own my own home, have investments, savings and will probably some day be able to retire. I’m not obtusely wealthy, but if my dad were still alive, he’d recognize that I am well on my way to actually escaping that cycle of family poverty.
My success is specifically because of what the current Republican congress are targeting as ‘entitlement programs’, and their hatred of such programs is driven by the Reagan-esque image of Welfare Queens and serial abusers. I never once abused a single one of these essential programs, and the core restructuring that has been done to them would ensure that I would NOT be able to be successful in today’s society. And I’m not holding myself up as some sort of moral icon….I know lots of folks who grew up as I did, and NOT ONE of them abused their government assistance. And every one of them would claim that such assistance was the difference between a secure future, or a life of poverty and struggle.
...
https://myronbuck.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/i-found-success-i-probably-wouldnt-today/
December 4, 2017 · by myronbuck
“Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don’t they help themselves, no
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yeah
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, no
(Fortunate Son. (C) 2012 Concord Music Group, Inc.)
By most measures, I am successful. But it wasn’t necessarily going to be so. As a precursor to my main point, let me share my life story, in brief. You’ll see why.
My family roots come from hardscrabble New England stock. No one was wealthy, everyone back to the Mayflower worked hard to get by, never amassing huge tracts of land or rising to own large businesses…we were working class, and the Great Depression made us Working Class poor. When he was 17, my dad lied about his age to enlist (as many did) to escape the looming poverty that hung over our family, and spent the next 25 years in the military. I was born when he was stationed overseas during his 5th or 6th year of service.
Growing up, I remember being told that I was going to go to college so much it became a mantra. My dad saw that as an escape from our family’s destiny of rural poverty, but I had no idea how to achieve it: no one in my family history….NO one…had ever been to college. Like so many other kids, I was unaware of the challenges my parents or grandparents had faced making their way through life, as I lived in the protected, provided world of being an Air Force brat. So when Dad retired and followed his agrarian dream to rural Maine, I arrived in this small town, born in Japan, having lived around the world, like some creature from outer space.
Dad worked odd jobs as much as he could but there was not much available in the realm of full-time work in rural Maine. He ended up leveraging the GI Bill to start undergrad studies at the state University about 60 miles away, which necessitated him living apart from the family. It also meant he did not work. We did what we could…hauled trash, raked blueberries, did manual labor, pitched hay, combed harvested potato fields, sold crafts….but if it were not for Food Stamps and other forms of federal aid, we would certainly have spiraled downward into permanent rural poverty. As it was, free school lunches and welfare assistance for my mom enabled us to have a somewhat normal life….’normal’ for rural Maine. We used a wood stove for heat (I could not have anything liquid in my bedroom at night in the winter as it would freeze solid), actually dug up the topsoil in our back yard and sold it to make ends meet one year, we raised chickens, pigs and a cow for food (I used to eat the corn meal mush that we heated up for the pigs in midwinter for my own breakfast, right out of the metal pail sitting on the stove), hunted deer to fill the freezer, drove third- and fourth-hand beater cars, wore clothes until they were in tatters, and made do.
I was anything but a successful student. Caught up in the world of feeling misplaced and insecure, I struggled with my classes and with fitting in, and my grades reflected that. But in my Freshman year, someone recognized my potential and enrolled me in a summer program called Upward Bound. It was a federally funded program designed specifically to encourage rural poor kids with college potential from families who had never attended college to be successful in HS and go on to further education. This program was an effort to break the poverty cycle, and it worked on me. I found my stride, developed confidence and for the first time I realized that attending college was not only possible, it was likely.
I got admitted to the state university near my home, and after a rough start because of my immaturity, I found the skills and strength to achieve. Tuition and housing was considerably more than I could ever afford (I had a monthly income during the HS years from money I earned during the summers at UB….of $5 a month), so I qualified for federal aid. The school would load me up with student loans, but fearful of debt, each fall I would go to the Financial Aid office and ask them to convert them to Work Study money. This was money laid aside for me to earn, tax free (it was student aid, which was not considered taxable income). Using Work Study funds, I slowly worked my way through my undergraduate degree, taking out small loans when necessary for large expenses (such as books, or first/last/damage deposits on apartments). These loans were tax-deferred and at low tax rates, so I emerged only $4000 in debt and with a BA, With Honors. I paid off my student loans in time, without defaulting, and started on my career path, threading my way through those lean early years until I developed a resume and marketable credentials.
Since then, and after a long adventurous life, I have become a successful International School teacher. I’m debt-free, own my own home, have investments, savings and will probably some day be able to retire. I’m not obtusely wealthy, but if my dad were still alive, he’d recognize that I am well on my way to actually escaping that cycle of family poverty.
My success is specifically because of what the current Republican congress are targeting as ‘entitlement programs’, and their hatred of such programs is driven by the Reagan-esque image of Welfare Queens and serial abusers. I never once abused a single one of these essential programs, and the core restructuring that has been done to them would ensure that I would NOT be able to be successful in today’s society. And I’m not holding myself up as some sort of moral icon….I know lots of folks who grew up as I did, and NOT ONE of them abused their government assistance. And every one of them would claim that such assistance was the difference between a secure future, or a life of poverty and struggle.
...
https://myronbuck.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/i-found-success-i-probably-wouldnt-today/
A friend blogged this today, and I thought it was worth sharing, as it shows the benefits of many programs to assist people out of poverty in some detail. Posted with permission of the author.
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