When I was growing up in Renton, I have to say it was a great childhood. Unlike the kids today, we could ride our bikes virtually anywhere, we didn’t have to worry about perverts jumping out of the bushes and abducting us and there were no video games to suck our lives away, only Saturday morning cartoons.
It was a great time to be a kid. For you youngun’s out there, this would be anywhere from 1962 (when I was four) until about the mid 70s, when I finally headed off to college.
My father had become increasingly ill over during this time. He virtually worked himself to death in his TV shop which was on Sunset Blvd. next to Earl’s Appliance. Dino’s Bistro was across the street. He had a hobby shop there for a while, but I think all the samples we four boys would take home regularly made that part of his business insolvent. There were models to build, paint by numbers to dabble on (they never gave you enough paint) and mosaics to create.
Eventually, my father had to close his shop as he seemed to be in the hospital more than at home. My mother would dutifully drive in to the Vet’s Hospital every weekend so she could spend time with him. I always went along. I wasn’t allowed upstairs in the hospital, so I just passed the time in the lobby, watching horribly disabled Vets pass by.
We would then head home, always stopping at this one restaurant along the way to eat. It was a ritual of ours.
When my father was home, he would be bedridden for long periods of time. He couldn’t work. And yet, it never dawned on me how we ever survived back then. I was a kid and I guess no kid ever thinks about how his parents make ends meet. The only thing I really knew was that I got free lunches at McKnight Middle School. Originally I had this little card that told them the lunch lady that my meal was gratis. Then she knew me by my face and didn’t ask anymore. I thought it was pretty cool getting free lunches. I had no idea why.
You see, I never knew I was poor. I didn’t know it until years later, well into adulthood, that we only made our way with the help of Welfare, food stamps and Medicaid. I can’t imagine what would have happened if these programs hadn’t helped our family.
I know a lot of people think these programs are a waste of our resources and I am the first to agree there is a lot of abuse of these social programs. But without them, I would have been a far different person and I certainly wouldn’t be here writing this to you now.
My mother never complained. She was a wizard at making ends meet. She worked her magic every day of her life, taking care of a sick husband, making sure all the bills were paid, shopping every sale should could find and always making sure there was food to eat.
I never lacked for a thing as a young man, even in my teens. My mother even financed my dating life, secretly worrying, I think, that if she didn’t, I would become a homosexual. That was just my mom… sacrificing everything to see that I grew up just like all the others around me who had a lot more than I did.
The only thing we didn’t do was go on vacations in the later years. While my childhood was spent at Surftides in Lincoln City, we never took a vacation from the time I was perhaps nine on. Again, I never really thought about it. While my friends vacationed each summer at Disneyland, I was content with the endless adventures I could have at home. I was never short of things to do in the summer.
And when school time came along, I didn’t lack either. Somehow my mom figured out how to keep a rapidly growing teenager in school clothes back then. She even let me choose this “fashionable” red, white and blue outfit at Sears once, complete with an ascot and of course, bell bottoms. I wore it on the first day of school and never again. I looked soooooo out of place with all my friends in their dungarees and cords. We weren’t allowed to wear jeans back then.
She even got me a pair of Adidas sneakers when I was in high school. Well, several pairs. This was when they were still being made in Germany and they weren’t cheap. My mother never complained. She never said we couldn’t afford them, though looking back now, I don’t know how she did.
Today, I try to raise my child the same way I was raised. Rarely does he know any of my problems. I try not to let my own issues affect him too much. Sometimes I hurt horribly or there are things going on in my personal life that outright suck. I don’t dump it all on him. Instead, I try to let him enjoy these golden years of teenhood when you have absolutely no real responsibilities in this world and you and your friends are blissfully unaware of the challenges that lie ahead in life.
I think that is how it should be. Lord knows I have no idea how I would have turned out if I had had to carry the burden of my childhood years, knowing how poor we really were financially.
And if you notice, I said financially. Because while we sometimes didn’t have two nickels to rub together, I was rich guy — for I had a mother who sacrificed a lot to make sure that her last son at home had a great childhood, which inevitably has led to a great life as an adult.
Thanks mom!
Out on the Treasure Coast, poor by some people’s measure, but filthy rich in so many other ways,
– Robb