Agreed, except to add that one could be talking about “them” after having listened to them (which your “chances are” seems to cover). 
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I would vote a big no on the miners cap. They don’t look anything like that and they have lights on them.
@koocheekoo thinking its a motorcycle driving cap is the way I’m leaning too.
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My father and aunts grew up in the Ozarks around this time. I visited the area several times during my childhood and teens in the 70’s and 80’s. I was also back there for my grandmother’s funeral about 10 years ago.
My dad, born in 1938, remembers when they got electricity, one of the last areas of the country to become electrified. Assuming he was at least 5 years old (in order to have a memory of this event), that means they got electricity in 1943 or later.He said that the really big deal about electricity was hot water.
My grandparents were subsistence farmers who raised their own cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens as well as grew a large vegetable garden. My aunt was a champion squirrel hunter, for the reason another poster stated - it was something they ate a lot of.
The land there is rocky and the people there are hard; you think they would all rely upon each other but there is a toughness and unwillingness to share. My aunt said she could not remember one time going over to a neighbor’s house for dinner, or even being offered so much as a glass of water at someone’s house, that they would visit with each other for short periods and then leave with no refreshments.
My grandparents still had their farm until my grandfather died when I was age 7 (he was about 60 years old); it was exactly what people imagine when they dream of an ideal rural life. The work was hard - up early every morning to milk cows, tend to the animals. My grandmother sold the farm after he died, and there are very few people anymore who live as they did, so completely off the land.
At my grandmother’s funeral, all my aunts and my dad were remembering her, and saying that they were raised somewhat like the animals - that there was always a concern for their physical health and money for doctor’s and dentist’s visits, but they imagined that grandma had never once given a thought to their self esteem.
As far as the discussions of poverty going on, from what I know, people had lots of land, and could live off it, so, yes, they were poor in the sense that they had very little money but they did have resources. The school was a single room schoolhouse and the education was apparently excellent - my father and many of his friends had scholarships to a very well known school where they were on the debate team. All of my aunts have advanced degrees, and two are college professors.
People did make a lot of their own things; my aunts talk about their clothes all being made by their mother. I remember that my grandmother was always knitting, crocheting, or sewing - never had her hands empty - usually using inexpensive fabrics and yarns from the five and dime. My dad’s whole side of the family is frugal and practical, and even though several make fair money, they seem to have little interest in acquiring fancy things but delight in little fancy soaps from the dollar store or an attractive potholder from Walgreens. They can all cook huge meals out of flour, some lettuce, and a few pantry items - it always amazed me how my dad could make such great dinners out of the things that were starting to go bad in our fridge - and have a great capacity for work.
- After I wrote this, I realized that I had not been entirely truthful in my writing. My dad had 4 sisters, but recently the oldest died. She DID live a obviously elegant life. In fact, her life was so the opposite of how she grew up that one can only surmise that she was trying very hard to leave the Ozarks behind her. The last home of hers I visited, in the elegant Capital Hill district of Washington, DC, was the sort of design that immediately makes you uncomfortable in her home - all the precious items and overly fancy sofas. She liked fine wines and was a gourmet cook who had expensive appliances in her home. When her husband’s ex-wife died, she adopted his then teen children who spoke at her funeral (they are now adults with families of their own). One son said that when they were first adopted things were not as fat as they were later, but that my aunt always lit candles at dinner back in those leaner times, that she always was trying to make her life appear refined. You can be sure she did not learn that from my grandma.
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My dad grew up during the 30s, much of it on a farm in Colorado, where they dry-farmed wheat, after moving from Texas and Oklahoma. Grandpa had a day job as an accountant, when there was work, and had been the first one in his family to go to college, so they weren’t as poor as much of the country, but they still farmed, didn’t have indoor toilets, bathed in the river during the week and boiled water for hot baths on Saturdays. Dad was the youngest kid and had the dog for his pet, so unlike his siblings who had pet chickens and goats, his pet didn’t get eaten. Grandma had been the last of 8 kids (7 that lived), and her mother died in childbirth*, so her father placed most of the kids with various aunts and uncles because he couldn’t raise them all and farm at the same time. I know she taught school some years; I’m not sure if it was when they were farming or after they moved to a city.
(*And if anybody tries to tell you that birth control is a bad thing, please yell at them for me?)
Most likely, that phrase means that this cabin is currently underneath the Lake of the Ozarks.
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I just got back from rural Mississippi and Alabama. The level of poverty in the small towns and countryside is astonishing to someone from the Northeast. I would not be surprised if the inside of many of the houses I saw was not too far advanced from this today.
It was really an eye opener as to the disparities between rich and poor areas of the country and between areas very close to each other in the same county or state. As a full-on NYC urban dweller and (maybe) aging hipster, I think it’s really important to see first hand just what things are like in the areas of the country that don’t get talked about.
Consider my eyes well and truly opened. Now to try and work out what to do with that (limited) insight.
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I grew up in Alabama, but when I moved into a very rural area, and went to the local public school for middle school, I met kids who were truly, astonishingly, poor. My first job was at a fast food place. The managers had to take the extra food and throw it away every night. It was a waste but they would get into awful trouble if they gave that food away. Nevertheless, there was one kid who lived in the poorest road in my town that they would take the risk for - always gave him the extras. Fast food managers are not really known for their generosity, so, that gives you an idea of just how poor this kid was. He was supporting his whole family on his pay at this fast food place. It was totally heartbreaking.
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Couldn’t they sort of gently place the leftover food on top of the trash, over a plastic bag, at the same time every day? Then it’s not their fault if people take stuff out of the trash, is it…?
Nowadays there is a charity that collects the food that businesses throw away and uses it to feed homeless people, called Second Harvest, but I think at the time it wasn’t around yet or didn’t exist in that area. I can’t remember the exact protocol on the food throwing out but I think maybe they had to render it inedible or something. I always thought it was such a weird thing, especially considering that so many of the people who worked there could have taken it to their families as a nice side benefit to working a crap job, but I guess it was to prevent managers from deliberately making too much then profiting from the leftovers and thus reduce the dreaded “shrink.” Also known as employee theft.
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Many episodes of The Twilight Zone featured this sort of life, not because it was part of the plot or ironic, it was just Rod Serling acknowledging that a huge chunk of the country still lived this way in the 1960s.
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Just as a coda to the Ozarks circa the Great Depression, the last time I was in my dad’s hometown, the little town square which had formerly housed a series of down and out businesses - a dusty Five and Dime, an old lady dress shop featuring strange double polyester frocks, etc - had been renovated to the point that the place was almost unrecognizable. We ate at a cozy cafe that served wine and tapas - this is the same town where the best restaurant used to be a barn like building that served fried chicken and curly fries. I understand that the state of Missouri has a program to build bike paths through the little villages there and that now there are a series of quaint little boutiques and coffee shops where once the little girl in the picture lived.
I couldn’t figure out if I just wasn’t explaining myself in an intelligible manner or what. That, and some people seem to have no anger inhibition with the anonymity of the internet. I really feel bad when there’s a failure to communicate (Cool Hand Luke). Thanks for your explanation.
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