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When We Were First Together, We Were SO Broke That....
- Thread starter Fat Freddy
- Start date
kids were so cruel back then, my K-Mart wardrobe took a beating from them mocking me
I started working at 16 & buying my own clothes.
I feel a little triumphant when I'm buying food at the food-truck in front of the now closed-down K-Mart. I outlasted them!
Ironically however, I could not care less about what I wear now. Scrubs are great, they're tough to stain & the fabric is breathable.
I started working at 16 & buying my own clothes.
I feel a little triumphant when I'm buying food at the food-truck in front of the now closed-down K-Mart. I outlasted them!
Ironically however, I could not care less about what I wear now. Scrubs are great, they're tough to stain & the fabric is breathable.
So whenever the conversation gets around to "We were so poor that..." the first thing that pops into my mind was that night when I was 19 years old with no real job, maybe one gig every three months, had one dollar in my wallet that I was determined not to spend on food because if I could wait until Friday I'd be able to spend it on (a) beer, but this was a Tuesday and the only thing we had in the entire kitchen was flour, and butter
...so I made what we retrospectively called "Grispo Fritters" for dinner: Mix flour and water until it's the consistency of ...well, wet flour. Form it into a pancake, and fry it in butter. Yum
Not.
...so I made what we retrospectively called "Grispo Fritters" for dinner: Mix flour and water until it's the consistency of ...well, wet flour. Form it into a pancake, and fry it in butter. Yum
Not.
....
My dad ate nothing but fiberglass and cardboard for 5 years to put me through music school.
I like Kirk Hammett talking about living in a rehearsal space in NYC back before they broke big. He said, "I've heard other people talk about only being able to afford baloney on bread, we were so broke all we could afford was baloney on hand."
In the Rush documentary "Beyond the Lighted Stage", Neil Peart relates how poor they were during and after touring in 1975 during their "Caress of Steel" tour. Their 3rd album was a flop and they were sometimes playing to crowds of fewer than 100, and they weren't getting paid by the record company.
They were reduced to crashing on friends' couches and begging for necessities.
Then they released "2112" and sold a butt load of copies, started playing shows in arenas, and began their journey to wealth and fame.
... oh man , we were so broke that this was a regular meal for a few years ...
I'm 59, and doing well enough to be able to afford a decent variety of meals, but this^ still looks good to me!
All joking aside, I married young, and my wife and I were struggling, so we moved out of state to take a good paying job that I was offered, which included decent housing.
For whatever reason, when we arrived in town with everything that we owned in the back of our old, rusty Ford Escort, plus a whole $40, the job was no longer available and we suddenly had no place to live and no income.
Jobs were virtually impossible to get at the time in that area, so we just did what we had to do. We found an abandoned old house in the woods and set up camp there. There was no heat, electric, or water, but there was the luxury of an outhouse and we built a firepit. Firewood was plentiful.
It would drop below freezing every night, so to stay warm we put a bunch of large rocks in the campfire in the evening when we cooked dinner, which was usually beans and rice or noodle soup. When the sun went down, I'd bring the rocks inside the house and place them next to our sleeping bags, and the radiant heat from the rocks would actually bring the temperature up in the room from 20 F to about 40 F. Sharing a sleeping bag also helped keep us warm.
In the meantime, we'd walk the 5 miles to town everyday and look for work. We didn't take the car because we couldnt afford to waste gasoline.
We lived that way for about 10 weeks until we both found regular part time jobs and could finally afford the rent for a small room in a community apartment.
That was rough. My wife's weight dropped from 120 to 110. Mine dropped from 150 to 120.
Thirty years later, we still talk about it, and our kids and grandkids have a hard time understanding how anyone can live like that. We've told them that, not too many years ago, that was the way everybody lived . . . if you were lucky.
For whatever reason, when we arrived in town with everything that we owned in the back of our old, rusty Ford Escort, plus a whole $40, the job was no longer available and we suddenly had no place to live and no income.
Jobs were virtually impossible to get at the time in that area, so we just did what we had to do. We found an abandoned old house in the woods and set up camp there. There was no heat, electric, or water, but there was the luxury of an outhouse and we built a firepit. Firewood was plentiful.
It would drop below freezing every night, so to stay warm we put a bunch of large rocks in the campfire in the evening when we cooked dinner, which was usually beans and rice or noodle soup. When the sun went down, I'd bring the rocks inside the house and place them next to our sleeping bags, and the radiant heat from the rocks would actually bring the temperature up in the room from 20 F to about 40 F. Sharing a sleeping bag also helped keep us warm.
In the meantime, we'd walk the 5 miles to town everyday and look for work. We didn't take the car because we couldnt afford to waste gasoline.
We lived that way for about 10 weeks until we both found regular part time jobs and could finally afford the rent for a small room in a community apartment.
That was rough. My wife's weight dropped from 120 to 110. Mine dropped from 150 to 120.
Thirty years later, we still talk about it, and our kids and grandkids have a hard time understanding how anyone can live like that. We've told them that, not too many years ago, that was the way everybody lived . . . if you were lucky.
We took the Rolls Royce instead of the chopper into the city.
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