Go Fund Me
- Thread starter sstterry
- Start date
Myself 100% the same way. My dad had a heart attack when he was 44 (heavy smoker) and I was 4 years old at the time. From then on, I knew it was on me, only son. Neither of my parents ever had another job, neither graduated HS and my mother couldn't drive. I never got paid for any work, and I remember one time we had 209 head of cattle and they sold cheap then. It was either chopping silage, hay field, fencing, working cattle, tobacco, milking, getting in firewood, working on old equipment, etc. I thought we were well off but were just white trash. There was never any extra money, very little help hired, but we could take a piece of junk fix it up and use it.
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OP
OP
You may have been poor, but you and your family were never trash.
chevytaHOE5674
Well-known member
Around here before go fund me there was always church pie socials, bake sales, spaghetti dinners, etc to raise money when somebody got hurt or sick.
Difference being those avenues raises a couple thousand bucks at best.
Also there wasn't much need to raise 100k to save your infant child's life by some experimental procedure because it didn't exist, they just died.....
Now a days me nephew who wasn't expected to live past 1yo is 26yo because of the generous support from communities far and wide raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for surgerys and procedures that no insurances covered.
Difference being those avenues raises a couple thousand bucks at best.
Also there wasn't much need to raise 100k to save your infant child's life by some experimental procedure because it didn't exist, they just died.....
Now a days me nephew who wasn't expected to live past 1yo is 26yo because of the generous support from communities far and wide raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for surgerys and procedures that no insurances covered.
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Dave
Well-known member
I started picking berries to buy my own school cloths at age 10. I was real happy when I got old enough to get a real job and didn't have to pick berries anymore.
Ky hills
Well-known member
I’ve worked on farm all my life,
@jltrent your experience is similar to mine, but I believe you are much more skilled at mechanics and fixing things than I am. My father was a heavy smoker too, unfiltered Camels, on top of being a heavy drinker. He was diagnosed with emphysema when I was 4, I was 18 when he passed and he had been pretty much incapable of working for several years before.
I worked in tobacco. The only things I didn’t help with was the gassing and sowing the plant beds, as I was in school during that time of year. My legs are just a little too short to straddle the rails in the barn to hang tobacco, so I always had the job of handing off the wagon.
I could climb up and throw down tobacco though. I’d stand on one rail and throw it down.
I taught myself how to drive and run equipment. Learned a lot of things the hard way.
My grandfather was a tenant farmer, my father always had a job, my mother’s family were farmers. Growing up I thought we were well off in comparison and in a lot ways that was true, but I was surprised to learn what people really thought.
I’d grown up hearing a lot of things but didn’t connect any of till years later.
For a long time people just saw me as the son of a drunk and figured me to be similar.
We don’t live very extravagantly, it’s kind of funny to us, a lot of the folks that stay at our Airbnb, think we are just the hired help, they are surprised to find out that we are owners.
Ky hills
Well-known member
My mother went to interview for a job once and she had been picking blackberries before and still had stain on her hands. She thinks that was why she didn’t get hired. She went back a while later and got hired on.
OP
OP
I know a girl on another social media place that said, "I used to love to work in tobacco." My first thought was, "Honey, you must not have worked in the same tobacco that I did!"
Dave
Well-known member
Strawberries in June, Raspberries in July, and Blueberries in August. I don't think I average $4 a day. I know I didn't with the Blueberries. They only paid 4 cents a pound. I was lucky to get 50 pounds a day picked. The Raspberries were my best money maker. I was so happy when i went to work at a chicken hatchery. Cleaning the breeder barns. $1.25 an hour for cleaning chicken houses with a scoop shovel and a wheel barrow. I walked home and Dad said he could see the grass grow behind me as I cut through the field.
Ky hills
Well-known member
Always interesting to learn about regional differences.
Here strawberries can start getting ripe by late April if it’s warm, and they are in full swing in May. We have some raspberries here but not as common as blackberries. Late June early July blackberries are in their peak.
Peaches are in their peak in July, some varieties are earlier and some later.
I planted a few blueberry bushes a few years ago, but didn’t get much from them. I think the birds got to them.
Blackberries grow wild here pretty common and my family never sold any they always picked and my grandmother and then my mother would make jam and jelly out of them. That was the main dessert that my mother’s family had when she was growing up was biscuits and blackberry jam. She said that her brother would get so tired of it that when he was sent to school with jam and biscuits, he’d try to trade it with somebody for something different. I reckon that’s where his love of trading originated from.
I remember one time I was a young man out working in fence and came across so blackberry briars that had ripe berries in them. I commenced a pickin some for my mother, and when I got what I could get to, I got back in the truck and was covered in ticks.
Hauling square bales, picking peas, hauling watermelons, cut, split, & stack firewood, priming/painting hay rings, repairing fences, and helping neighbors work calves, and helping work our own cows (among many other odds and ends jobs) were all various things I did before turning 16 when I went to work in a chicken hatchery…until that job, sometimes got paid, sometimes didn’t…the minimum wage when I went to work at the hatchery was $3.35/hour…I started at $4.00/hour (woohoo!)…when I left 4-1/2 years later, I was making $4.16/hr.
