SIMPLE AND POOR

When I was a little boy my family was poor, but when you are a child you don't realize it. It wasn't until many years later that I realized just how poor we were. However, a family isn't and shouldn't be measured in how much they have but how much they struggle.

One of my first memories was of me going to the outhouse on a cold and snowy night. There must have been trauma because that night has stuck in my mind for sixty years. Yes, we didn't have indoor plumbing then. So besides going to the outhouse we also got our water supply from a nearby sand spring. It was good water coming from the ground from that sand spring, cold and crystal clear. It wasn't until a couple of years later until we had a well drilled and finally indoor plumbing. To a little boy it seemed like heaven on earth.

We didn't go hungry though, so I guess by those standards we weren't that poor. All of our family were hunters, including my mother. We lived on deer meat for much of the year. Also cottontail rabbits, squirrels, grouse, and fish were what consisted of our daily meals. We did raise chickens every year, so we had fresh eggs and I remember picking many a feather from those chickens as we prepared them for the freezer.

My brother and I spent hours outside. Those were long before the days of the computer and video games. Television was in its infancy and we only got about five channels between New York City and Philadelphia. We didn't have a football, so we played football with a milk carton stuffed with leaves. It seems kind of funny when I think of it now.

Other times we spent playing baseball, basketball, and ice skating on my Uncle John's pond. Oh, how I loved to ice skate, I did it for hours and hours. I would go outside in the summer and catch lightning bugs and put them in a jar. At the time I called it a poor man's flashlight. When you are a young boy growing up country in a very rural area of the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in the 1950s your imagination can really go wild.

We played cowboys and indians for hours with our cap guns. We didn't end up killing anybody. What has happened in today's society? It seems kids can't be kids anymore. In the summer we would have apple fights. We had many apple trees near our home and we would get three or four kids together and have apple fights. I remember going home with a bulge on my face and when mom asked what happened I would make up an idiot excuse. Can you imagine it being fun getting hit in the face with an apple LOL?

I have long since grown up and left the Pocono Mountains. However, I still have that little country boy in me and he will never leave. I may have been poor, but my memories of those times are rich in my heart and always will be.


Copyright  Larry W. Fish  2014