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Edited on Wed Mar-17-10 12:14 AM by Drunken Irishman
I am not wealthy. I was not born into wealth. My family has absolutely no ties to wealth. None. You can go back generations and find absolutely zero well off folks.
My grandma was the daughter of Irish immigrants. Both separately came over from Ireland and met in Denver, Colorado before marrying (one was a Sheridan, the other a Cassidy) and moving to Salt Lake City, Utah because it was a large rail city.
Then the Great Depression hit. My grandma always had stories about how her aunt had to move in with them because neither could afford their own house payments. They weathered that storm and my grandfather did own a pharmacy on the city's west-side, which at the time was home to mostly Greek, Italian and Irish (today, it's mostly Latino). Again, far from being well off.
My grandpa's story isn't much different. His family emigrated over from Ireland a generation before my grandma's due to the potato famine. His dad upped and left my great grandmother when my grandpa, an only child, was born. His mom, along with her mother and her mother's sister, raised him. He then went off to fight in World War II, returned to Utah and married my grandmother.
After serving in the military through the 40s and early 50s, he decided to leave (right before the Korean War) because he wanted his family to settle in Utah - where he could be with his mother and my grandmother could be with her parents.
Once settled, he became a teacher at Lincoln Elementary here in Salt Lake and moved his way up to high school, where he taught biology until the 1980s.
My grandma, for a good portion of this, was a stay at home mom. My mom was the first born and they had three other daughters after Mom was born. By the 1970s, however, both my grandparents realized it was just not economically feasible for her to not work. So she got a job as a social worker for the state of Utah. A decade later, both my grandparents were allowed to retire.
My dad's story is much different. He grew up with eight brothers and sisters. His dad died when my dad was five and his mom was left to raise them all on her own. She was very abusive both verbally and physically to my father because, for whatever reason, he reminded her of his dad more so than any of her other children.
It forced my dad to leave and at the age of sixteen, signed up, with his mother's blessing, to fight in Vietnam.
He was never the same. There were plenty of issues that he had to deal with during the war and after. Namely drug related. He got clean, though, found my mom and they married.
But those issues stemming from the war, specifically the haunting images and his struggle with Agent Orange, led to severe issues down the road (I'll get to that later).
My dad worked as a trucker for a while, but he was rarely home and it was putting a strain on my parents' marriage. He quit and got a job as a shift manager at 7-11. Yes, my dad worked a good portion of my childhood as a manger at 7-11 (I told you we didn't have it easy).
My mom also worked as a daycare provider for a school called Small World until her friend's mom set up a daycare of her own. She stayed there until it closed down in the early-90s due to economic reasons and she eventually ran a small daycare out of our home.
Dad finally left 7-11 and found a job as a door and window frame maker. It was a step up, but hardly the high life.
Because the jobs weren't very impressive, my parents didn't make impressive money. Often they went without so that my brother and I could have a good Christmas or birthday. We also didn't have insurance - at all. This was before chips and because of that, Mom constantly feared we were one injury from the poor house. That meant no climbing in trees or riding my bike without a helmet and kneepads.
My dad was also an alcoholic. He really picked up drinking after the war to cope with what he had witnessed. I don't know what he saw because it's one aspect of his life he will not talk about. And I don't press him because I know, even today, it's a very difficult subject to discuss.
I also found it very difficult to form a relationship with him because of the drinking. He wasn't ever physically abusive to me and hardly emotionally abusive, either. But he worked long hours and the only free time he had was spent either sleeping or drinking. We just could never bond. It's sad, really.
Then in 1996, Grandpa had a stroke. It was a bad stroke that left him paralyzed on one side of his body. My grandma basically faced the prospects of either putting him in a home (which she did not want to do), have a live in nurse (which she did not want) or have my my mom, dad and me move in with them (my 17 year old brother had moved out around this time due to a spat about curfew with my parents). My mom was asked because we didn't own a house. We lived in a four-plex, apart of fairly low income rentable housing in a poorer area of our neighborhood.
What do you say to that? You can't really say no to that.
So they moved.
Which might've been a blessing because, at the same time, my dad's job shut the doors to its Utah plant because they didn't want to unionize. He was left without a job.
Thankfully, after about a year or two of unemployment, he was offered a job as a janitor at the local VA Hospital here, you know, since he was a veteran.
My mom, who had worked pretty much her whole adult life, didn't. She spent her days helping Grandma take care of Grandpa.
I liked living up there with my grandparents because it provided me a chance to bond again with them. I was really close with both - but living under the same roof for as long as we did provided some great memories. It also got me out of a very bad neighborhood (our house had been shot up because they mistook us for a neighbor in the unit next to ours who was a member of the Tongan Crips), I saw countless ODs and shootings, stabbings and fights.
But there were also issues. My dad's drinking had picked up during the time he was without a job and he was also starting to show signs of Agent Orange. There were a whole host of issues he had to deal with and that made him drink even more.
Then we found sudden mood changes. They were pretty awful. He would go into flashback mode and list off his name and unit in the military and how he was trained to kill. It was really scary. There were times where he threatened to kill me. We found out later this was all due to his PTSD from the war. Of course, for so long it went untreated because many at the VA did not believe it to be a real disorder.
But it was. I saw it first hand. I lived it first hand. It scarred me and a great deal of what was said can never be forgotten - even though I try.
He was put on meds, grandpa died and then grandma followed. He eventually lost his job, though, at the VA - but thankfully at that time was found 100% disabled by the government. Which allowed him enough money to get by.
My mom, who had worked her whole adult life, found herself without a job after grandma eventually went.
It was certainly a transition.
My dad has seen better days and I doubt he lives to see five years.
And yet I hear people tell me that I don't get it and if I did, I would not support this bill.
That if you support a great deal of Obama's policies, you're anti Middle Class. You're working against the working class.
Bullshit.
I am working class. I have been my entire life and might stay that way for the rest of my life.
And I know there are millions of people just like me who need help now.
Not ten years from now or two decades from now. Certainly not when a better bill comes along (who the hell knows when that will be).
So please don't tell me what to think or how I should think or that I'm wrong for believing this legislation will help those who need help the most.
Because I spent my entire childhood without any hope of progress.
With this legislation, I hope and believe that is something my children won't have to deal with - regardless of economic status.
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