This is going to be a bit long so I may break it up a little.
I grew up in rural areas and for much of my life I actually grew up quite poor. This was a good thing though as I learned to live without and I had to learn how to survive a very much self sufficient life. We gardened, preserved food, farmed animals and earned our living from the woods.
My parents taught me how to work. My Dad taught me how to fix just about anything. We hunted, fished, trapped and gathered edibles.
My dad worked as a carpenter but during the late 70's and all through the80's things were tough. My Dad did a lot of things to earn money and being as poor as we were, my brothers and myself where always in the mix of labor.
Some of the things I remember doing that looking back were a bit out of the ordinary, but non the less fed the family in hard times. I never remember going without. We cut cedar shake bolts, cut firewood, picked moss, ferns, salal, cedar boughs, mushrooms and berries. For several years my Dad had a permit to salvage from a drop box. We literally lived out of a drop box while living in a shack that we rented for $50 a month. Did I mention we were poor and times were tough? There were many a meal that came from the drop box. Usually when the Mormans changed out their canned goods once a year. Not as bad as it first sounded huh?
I will say again that we never went without. My dad while working the drop box made most of our money at first recycling the metals that people threw away; copper, steal, aluminum, brass and so on. This was all clean separated and hauled into the scrap yards. Soon he discovered that much of what people threw away was perfectly good. He would pull this stuff out and put it aside. When we had enough stuff to fill the truck we would haul it up to a flee market on the week ends and sell. Soon he was making more buying and selling stuff at the flee market then he was scrapping. I being the oldest was brought along to help sell while he was out buying. Eventually over time his merchandise ended up more in the antiques end of things. This meant that he moved from the flee markets to working the mall show circuits. Then this went to selling antiques whole sale to other dealers. During that 10 years of my life, I got an education that is still special to me.
I grew up in rural areas and for much of my life I actually grew up quite poor. This was a good thing though as I learned to live without and I had to learn how to survive a very much self sufficient life. We gardened, preserved food, farmed animals and earned our living from the woods.
My parents taught me how to work. My Dad taught me how to fix just about anything. We hunted, fished, trapped and gathered edibles.
My dad worked as a carpenter but during the late 70's and all through the80's things were tough. My Dad did a lot of things to earn money and being as poor as we were, my brothers and myself where always in the mix of labor.
Some of the things I remember doing that looking back were a bit out of the ordinary, but non the less fed the family in hard times. I never remember going without. We cut cedar shake bolts, cut firewood, picked moss, ferns, salal, cedar boughs, mushrooms and berries. For several years my Dad had a permit to salvage from a drop box. We literally lived out of a drop box while living in a shack that we rented for $50 a month. Did I mention we were poor and times were tough? There were many a meal that came from the drop box. Usually when the Mormans changed out their canned goods once a year. Not as bad as it first sounded huh?
I will say again that we never went without. My dad while working the drop box made most of our money at first recycling the metals that people threw away; copper, steal, aluminum, brass and so on. This was all clean separated and hauled into the scrap yards. Soon he discovered that much of what people threw away was perfectly good. He would pull this stuff out and put it aside. When we had enough stuff to fill the truck we would haul it up to a flee market on the week ends and sell. Soon he was making more buying and selling stuff at the flee market then he was scrapping. I being the oldest was brought along to help sell while he was out buying. Eventually over time his merchandise ended up more in the antiques end of things. This meant that he moved from the flee markets to working the mall show circuits. Then this went to selling antiques whole sale to other dealers. During that 10 years of my life, I got an education that is still special to me.
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