Quote Originally Posted by KA9MOT View Post
My mom and dad raised 10 kids. I remember dad having 2 jobs most of the time and for a couple of months he had 3 jobs. Mom worked too. Grandma watched the kids who were not old enough to be in school or at work, or both.

When I was 10 mom got me my first job (summer months) as a dish washer on Saturday night for a caterer who went to our church. My wages went into the family coffers. We had damned little but we had a roof, clean clothes and fresh healthy food. We raised chickens, and had a 1/4 acre garden, and some fruit trees. When I was 12, my brother Robert and I shared 3 paper routes. 2 in the morning before school and 1 after school. 800+ papers every day except Sunday.

I recently received an email entitled I'M OLDER THAN DIRT, and the first sentence was about not having fast food. For us, fast food was those damned chickens.
You had the family unit going with granma there. Even if she wasn't, I have a feeling you had family cohesiveness. A lot of families didn't. The dollar was the bottom line. Business was the bottom line. The family took a back seat. This is what a lot of families lived with.