Poor and Ignorant

Most of the children that I knew as I grew up lived much like me and my family. The house that I remember most had four rooms, a kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms, surrounding an enclosed porch. The half basement housed a huge coal burning furnace. The house was wrapped in brown Insulbrick, mineral clad tar paper and had a path that led to a privy. There was water to the basement and kitchen from a gravity flow spring about 300 yards on the hillside above the house.

My dad, Carl Beck worked the coal mines when I was younger before he was hired by The Walworth Valve Company in South Greensburg, Pennsylvania. We had no television, but had a wall mounted crank telephone on a party line. Dad always provided for us; we were never hungry and were warm in the cold winter months. My mom, Sybil Miner Beck always made sure our clothes were clean, the house was neat, and there was food, cooked, and on the table. The first stove in Mom’s kitchen was kerosene with two or three-burners. Sheets of linoleum covered rough subflooring. Mom had a wringer washer in the basement. Our clothes dryer was a line strung from basement rafters or stretched between two poles in the back yard. I can recall times when Mom’s hands raw and red from hanging sheets, pants, rugs, and towels outside when the snow was heavy on the ground and the air was frigid, then brought back in stiff with ice to finish drying.

I had little to worry about as a child. Never hungry, always warm and comfortable, I always thought we were rich. Because I was always hearing of the starving kids overseas and knew several elementary school classmates who were worse off than me, I kept this notion all the way through high school. I was raised in a rural area of southwest Pennsylvania and no one I knew was a millionaire to whom I could compare myself.

I was probably a junior in college when a professor started a litany of things that separated the classes. I knew that I wasn’t the upper echelon, but considered my family to be at least middle class, but by his standards, we were poor. Not dirt poor, but in the poorer class of society. All these years I had been poor and was ignorant of that “fact.” Who knew? Either his standards were off or my vision of wealth extended beyond his standards of wealth. I still believe that because I had a loving and caring family, I was a rich child.