Huh - what IS that? It looks like a cap with goggles built into it. It also looks very new. It doesn’t look like any aviator cap I’ve seen, as the goggles are usually separate, and this cap doesn’t look padded. I looked around for motorcycle, automobile, and swim caps and didn’t see anything like it.
Give me a break. You don’t have to tell me misery and happiness can coexist.
I was a poor person. Don’t tell me how poor people think and, oh, they’re just like the rest of the population. For real?
I’ll tell you the best thing about being poor and it isn’t a truism for all who have been poor in their lives. But, the best part is, you see the big picture. You see the unfairness of society and you see there are needs that must be met . You learn first hand what’s missing in people’s lives and no Romney not to mention a self satisfied little Bourgeois living in the burbs has the imagination to put themselves into that helpless position.
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It is heartbreaking.
The person who made that newspaper decoration had seen a fancier version. Maybe in someone else’s window. Maybe just in a catalog. That image wasn’t in newspaper. It’s the Ozarks after all: famously poor.
But this is 1936. That girl, maybe 7 years old? When she was a baby or just before she was born perhaps her mother hung real cloth curtains with a similar pattern.
There is desperation there.
Doesn’t mean it can’t also give other impressions.
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I’ve never really been poor. I worked minimum wage for a couple of years out of college, but I always knew I could borrow money from my parents if it came to it. But I’ll tell you, after two years working at a gas station, I am much nicer to people who work at gas stations (or any retail jobs) than I was before.
So, yeah. Even a little taste of poverty shows you a whole lot of truths about things that get taken for granted.
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Mark Frauenfelder who posted the story called the scalloped newspaper curtains heartbreaking, not me. Tell him he’s judgmental.
It’s good when people learn positive things from their life experiences.
Your comment has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with ‘rattypilgrim’s’ comment. Maybe you should re-read it. Yeah guess what, these people were really poor, not playing at making house. The comment had nothing to do with them “wanting pity” or “being judged”, or being “proud of their home”. It wasn’t a backyard fort for yuppie maker kids ffs…
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“LIW” was writing about frontier life 65 years (or so) before this pic was taken, but…
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I have seen aerial photos of Toronto from 75 years ago and today and the difference is that now there iare trees and 75 years ago it was a barren plain, probably because there was nothing that hadn’t already been burned for fuel.
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I’m one generation removed from this. My father grew up in a dirt floored cabin as a subsistence farmer. They plowed with a mule, and had very little technology that would have seemed strange to a peasant in mediaeval Europe. He would have been 12 in 1936. He had rickets growing up, and was often hungry. His first experience of food security was when he was drafted in WWII.
But because of free public education for all and a massive social program called the GI Bill, he ended up going to college, became an electrical engineer, helped build the first satellite based mapping systems, design the Space Shuttle, and ended his career helping put up the GPS system. It still amazes me.
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I think that is a cap for a motorcycle at the time. It may be that someone in the house is driving an older car. Likely though, it’s for a motorcycle. That’s my guess at least.
The little girl’s dress and cap appear to be handmade from flour sacks, and her shoes appear to be handmade and cut down from bigger shoes.
Is the cap hanging up a miner’s protective cap with goggles?
I too find the scalloping heartbreaking: determined to make the house pretty, someone - presumably the woman of the house - has carefully cut scallops into the newspaper ‘blind’ like the blinds of middle-class homes.
I was a poor person too. So there. Now really, stop it.
I was a poor person. I’ve been assaulted. I’ve had a homicide attempt. I’ve had cancer. I’ve lost teeth because of poverty. I’ve sat there realizing that I’m probably going to die and no one is able to help. I’ve had to go to public libraries because it’s the only internet access I can get while wearing donated clothes that still smell of some one else’s cigarettes while trying to research how to get out of this mess and into a better life.
So honestly bite me. You don’t speak for me either.
Understood?
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“purchased for Lake of the Ozarks project. Missouri.” I wonder if that very cabin is one of the ones at the state park, where I’ve camped several times? I’d be a bit surprised, but there is a woodburning stove and window placed in that same spot.
If so, this “kitchen” represents about 1/3 of the total living space.
Nice insights, but sadly co-optable by those who are quite content to leave the enormous black/white wealth gap intact, and worse yet, to say it’s a good thing, and/or something that’s the fault of blacks themselves.
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It’s not so much the poverty as whether or not people have their dignity once their basic needs are met.
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It is NOT heartbreaking. This is someone who saw how to make the ordinary a little less so.
I think the reason this aspect of the room is so important is that it gives us a clue that the poverty was not self inflicted. The family did care about improving themselves and their surroundings, so their humanity shines through even in grinding poverty. Some people may look at that kind of image and imagine that they were OK with their situation because the girl looks happy and the parents have cobbled together scraps of fabric to make clothes that the girl can feel beautiful in, and used old newspaper to decorate the room and cover up the fact that their house is falling apart. Rather it should show us that our relative wealth does not separate us from poor people to any great extent. This girl doesn’t deserve to grow up in grinding poverty. She and her parents appreciate beauty and aren’t just suited to doing backbreaking work every day. They have dignity and take pride in their few possessions. That child could have a terrible life ahead of her or die young due to lack of access to education or medical care, but not because she is not valuable or significant to those near her. Despite any inherent qualities we have, none of us would likely have fared much better than her. I think that’s the heartbreaking aspect of the image.
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The cleverness and ingenuity is inspiring, the gross wealth inequality it illustrates IS heartbreaking.
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I agree, but at the same time almost everything can be coopted to blame/hurt the more oppressed group. They’re either a “burden” and obviously inferior (thinking immediately of how vitamin D deficiency due to partial starvation was seen as a natural weakness), or they are “happy that way… SEE!?”
The key, to me, is whether or not the discourse is about “us” or “them” because if you are talking about “them” and they aren’t talking about themselves, then chances are you are forcing a narrative for your own reasons.
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