“My parents were children of the Depression, raised in single parent households, and poor as church mice”
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I also am a child of the depression,widowed mother,we ate whatever we could get.
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Understand, and God bless you. I have an oil lamp by which my mother studied before the REA came through to provide electricity in ~1939. Water pump out front for well water (later a pump at the kitchen sink) and an outhouse in the back. No indoor plumbing until 1947 when my father, now married to my mother, helped convert the cistern to a septic tank and build a bathhouse over it. My parents lived more like those in the 19th Century than the 20th, but my father worked his way through college, fought in WWII, rose to senior rank, obtained his doctorate, and taught university after he retired from the Army. He could have done none of it without my mother by his side (the family First Sergeant!) I haven’t known gnawing hunger except during my military survival training, but I never will forget how fortunate I am to live in the USA.