There is so much fodder for columns on Facebook. Last week I ran across a repost from 2015. It was a picture of a block of Pasteurized Process Cheddar Cheese from the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C. better known as “govment cheese”. The caption read, “if you never had this then you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.”
I am a child of the fifties, a baby boomer and according to national statistics we were poor growing up. But I didn’t realize we were considered poor until I was an adult and found out how my parents, mostly my mother disguised poor. I was born in 1952 in Belthoover and when I was born my parents lived in a rental on Chalfont Street. Both of my parents are from Richmond, Va., my father came to Pittsburgh to work on Neville Island. After renting for 10 years my mother had squirreled away enough money to pay for a lot on the east side of Pittsburgh. According to her side of the story my father was shocked that my mother saved enough money to buy a lot that a house was going to be built on by a Black builder. The bottom line is she did it and we moved in to our own home in October of 1954.
Both parents worked multiple jobs, cleaning houses, ironing clothes, painting rooms, catering parties. They bought home the food that was going to be thrown away and we made meals out of it for several days. The clothes that were to go in their employer’s trash were our “new” outfits. When we did get something new it was put on lay away. Finally my dad got a steady union job at Sealtest Foods; my parents saved their money and I thought we had a pretty good life. I never knew we were poor. Sometimes I would watch my mother roll coins and I would help her paste green stamps in the books and we would go and get a blanket or an electric fry pan.
I remember once we were in Homewood on Hamilton Avenue and we saw a long line of people in front of the school across from the Homewood Library. We wondered what they were giving away. We asked some of the people in line and they told us that they were given away cheese. I think that was in the early sixties and the cheese was given to people who were receiving public assistance. My mom liked free stuff but she said we were not eligible for the cheese so we keep driving.
I have been told that the cheese was the best cheese around, great for grilled cheese sandwiches and macaroni and cheese. So that post that said I didn’t know what it was like to be poor doesn’t realize that there are different types of poor, some families just manage it better. I’m grateful that my parents taught us to have our own and never developed a taste for “govment cheese.”
(Email the columnist at debbienorrell@aol.com)
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