When I was a kid I loved government cheese. We got everything in white boxes with black letters that said things like ?powdered milk? and ?oatmeal? on the sides.
I remember when I got my first job I bought some groceries. Felt like a king.
I still feel ?rich? when we come home from grocery store today.
Jim

I used to be young, dumb and poor. I got over the young part a long, long time ago.

To this day I never lived in a place with AC or cable TV. Except when I was working out of town in my early 20s and the boss rented a place for us to stay, had cable TV and sometimes AC five days a week, and lived out of my truck the other two. I guess that truck had AC, so maybe that counts?

All my "new" clothes came from the Salvation Army. The rest were hand me downs and my older brother was smaller than me.

We were so poor we couldn't afford second hand smoke.

We were so poor the squirrels would leave nuts at our door.

I think it was upstateNY who claimed, "I'm so poor, if it cost a nickel to poop, I'd have to throw up." lol

I lay claim to that one.

Baloney sammichs were so thin, they only had one side. When my dad broke his back the first time, we share picked for the farmers for three years: mom would take us kids out and pick whatever local crop was being harvested, we'd get to keep a tenth of what we picked. Kept us fed, along with road kill and my oldest brother doing a little hunting out of season. Sometimes ate only vegetables for weeks. Never was hungry though. My mom canned so much fruit and vegetables.

Honestly thought peanut butter was something rich people had.

Ketchup sandwichs....is next level poor

We were so poor that my brother thought he was a chicken. Dad was trying to scrape up enough money to get him to a doctor, but mom said no doctors. We need the eggs!

When we finally got a phone it was a party line

Hotdog water soup.

I just threw up a little bit.

We were so poor...

...at Christmas, we exchanged glances
...we had a tumbleweed as a pet

Lucky it wasn't your older sister!

Lol BigBob!!

I didn?t know what a grilled cheese sandwich was until the 8th grade.
When we were lucky enough to have breakfast it was corn flakes with water.
We got the corn flakes along with rolled oats and government cheese.
We didn?t have running water.. had to pull it up with a 5 gallon bucket.. we tried to not get it to full because it was hard to pull it up.
We heated up the water and washed ourselves using a small tub with a wash cloth..it was a treat when we had p e at school and I could use the shower.
We only had 1 vehicle and that was dad?s pickup.. us kids rode in the bed.. it really sucked in the winter time so we would sit as close to the cab as possible to keep the wind off of us. Wasn?t no luxury like a topper because dad hauled firewood and the topper would have been a hindrance.
I had a pair of bell bottoms courdroy that I absolutely hated .. got teased a lot.. it had rhinestones down the legs along the outside and looked like something Elvis Presley would have worn.
Candy and soda pop was hardly ever at our house,, candy showed up around Halloween from trick or treating and Christmas.
My little brother and myself got sugar sick bad once.
Our family was invited to a wedding and we went to the reception? never in my life did I ever see so much soda.
We ate so much wedding cake and drank so much pop that we started puking..
There?s tons more but I figured that is plenty for now

we were so poor we had to wash the pages of the Montgomery Ward catalog after we wiped our butt so we could reuse them again.