Overheard a couple of gents recently one-upping each other on this subject.

Personally, I never had a brand new winter jacket for school. Always hand-me-downs from older siblings. We always had enough to eat though as mom put up a lot of food for the winter.

Got a contribution to the thread?

I was so poor I had to wear wranglers where the seams didn?t line up just right when starched !

If you?re britches couldn?t stand up on their own where I come from, you?d get accused of taking welfare

When I was young,,we were so poor,,Blues singers came to our house for inspiration.

lol

We were so poor that my brother and I had to ride double on a stick horse.

We were selectively poor.

You could afford starch???.......now you're just showing off!

We were so poor we didn?t have toys, Ma cut holes in our pants pockets so we?d have something to play with?

I don't care what anyone else puts in this thread, trapper les wins.

We used to wait for the arrival of the Easter Rat.

Moosetrot

We were ok but our neighbours shack had huge cracks in the walls and no insulation
They couldnt afford milk either
If they didn?t add water to their Puffed Wheat in the morning the wind would blow it right out of the bowl
Very sad

We were so poor.
Parents named us "Oink".
When we hollered for each other, neighbors thought we were rich enough to own pigs.

Couldn't afford ketchup, I remember asking my mom for ketchup and it was a hard NO.

Not that we didn't have plenty of good food to eat, are a ton of deer and we raised commercial poultry so always had plenty of chicken, big garden and mom canned. Looking back I wouldn't trade what we had for ketchup, lunch able and Sunkist soda like the neighbors had.

If the bath water was over your thumb, you got a whupping. Oldest got the fresh hot water. If you added hot water, ya got whupped. After the third one through, ya got fresh hot water. Being the third one sucked. We got a clothes dry in 79. Parents clothes only though.

We had large pots on the wood stoves to add hot water after each bath. It was like a luxury spa.

I can relate to this. We had everything we needed and then some but most times if we wanted something extra we were always told that there was no money for it. We had to work and save our own money to get things that my parents didn't deem necessary.

As to the starched pants thing. I have heard of it but, I have never seen it before. Must be a rich southern plantation owner thing.

When I was a kid times were so tough that the Mississippi River only ran twice a week

Our house was so small, we had to go outside to change our minds