My dad was a tobacco/cigar salesman in Tulsa and this was when people discovered tobacco smoke was bad for you, plus it was too expensive in the 1950s for most people to buy a lot of extras like cigars. He worked at a company that went out of business. No warning, no severance pay, just went to work one day and the company had a CLOSED sign on the door. this happened to him two more times. Our little grocery store that my mother ran went broke too. Can you imagine married with three kids and you lose your job three times and your groc store goes belly up...
Well mom went to work first at a Dairy Queen, then Katz Dept store in Sapulpa OK. Then she went to work at the court house and late became County treasurer. for the first time she had a retirement plan.
We were very poor, but we were all deterimined to MAKE IT! we are all college grads and own our own homes.
My mother-in-law grew up in England, spent time in abusive foster homes and orphanages, did the family laundry to earn the price of a movie ticket. The laundromat was a row of stone sinks and washboards.
When she went to nursing school, she discovered that other girls had separate night clothes to sleep in, and her mother wouldn’t speak to her for six months for getting an education and acting like she was better than her family.
Her white privilege: the vision in the American movies, where people lived clean, orderly, prosperous lives. Her ticket out. But she had to earn every cent of it, and she left everything behind to get it.