Barbara Ohrstrom

3,246 words

Breaking Chains Forged by Poverty

My adoptive father often told us kids that he, during the Great

Depression, had had to pick coal off the railroad tracks after the trains had

gone through. The Great Depression seemed like something that happened

without color, a black and white dust bowl with Al Morong gleaning its surface.

In the photos always grimaced the men, white men, covered with coal dust or

grime, their faces pinched and worried like exactly like my adoptive father's.

My adoptive father never got over the Great Depression, picking coal off

the tracks, or the other experiences of poverty he must have had. Al went to

the Second World War when he was 19 and returned a man with a box full of

photos of himself and a couple of his army buddies in France. Their stories he

kept to himself. In the pictures from Paris, he grins happily, though behind

him, a building lay in ash and rubble. It forms a mosaic behind him, oddly

artistic, but nonetheless a mosaic of destruction, war, and the madness that

had shrouded these gritty men.

I suspect Al was happy because for the first time, he lived in the relative

plenty of chocolate, cigarettes, coffee and food in the midst of a scene of

deprivation and destruction. He had heat, clothes, and friends, and he was

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young, strong, handsome and healthy. The war saved him from his abjection.

I think it was, in some senses, the best time of his life.

After the fighting and celebrations, when he returned to Lynn,

Massachusetts to work at Cushman’s Bakery, he saved his money and

received more from the GI Bill. Cushman's went bankrupt and he decided to

risk becoming middle class. He and his brother Doug agreed to buy a little

store, One Stop Shop, in a small town in New Hampshire; at the last minute,

his brother, thinking the town too isolated, abandoned the arrangement.
While he wanted for business knowledge, Al was compelled in his reach up

from poverty to the heights of ownership, control, and money. So he, like the

denizens of the Tower of Babel, went it alone.

I was five when he bought One Stop Shop and moved us from Lynn to

Salisbury, and then again East Andover. By the time I was eight, he went

belly-up, like a speckled trout with mercury poisoning, because his customer

base could not support a store, as his brother had feared. After all that effort,

all the fighting, saving, struggling, scheming, and dreaming, he was back

where he started--picking coal off the railroad tracks--except this time, he

wasn't a boy anymore. He was a man with a family to feed. To make matters

worse for our family, he refused bankruptcy, his neck stiffened with pride, and

told his creditors he would pay them no matter how long it took him to do so.

Any little extra money he might have shared with the family went to store

products used long ago; i.e., cases of Campbell’s tomato soup, Schlitz beer,

Tide laundry detergent, or other goods.

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 At first, Al worked nights waxing floors and days stocking shelves at

Cricenti's Market. Sometimes I went along with him to help him wax floors.

The machine was far too heavy for me to manage, so he would have me carry

the rags and buckets. It was a novelty, fun at first, but soon it got frightening

and hard. The buildings were always empty; he was always grim and silent,

except to issue commands. "Bring that can of wax over here. I need another

rag. Don't miss the corners with that dry mop."

Eventually, he left waxing floors to add hours at Cricenti's, working for

the boss's son, whom he hated and complained about on a nightly basis at the

dinner table. His jealousy was bilious. According to him, Frank Junior was

nothing like the old man: he was mean, lazy, stupid, prone to fits of temper

over unwashed lettuce, irregularly shaped tomatoes, ill-placed carrots. Most

of all, I think Al hated Frank Junior because Frank Junior’s privilege had made

him Al’s boss. No one had lifted Al up.

I realize now my family’s poverty ground at my adoptive father. In turn,

Al kept his own in the soot. We certainly didn't have money for vacations,

meals at restaurants, new clothes, barbershop haircuts, or expensive whiskey.

My adoptive father began to drank cheap liquor daily. Because my adoptive

parents never discussed money particularly, I never knew we didn't have

money. Until well into my adulthood, I didn't realize the number of dollars (or

lack therof) it takes to be poor. I only felt impoverished. I knew I didn't have

objects other kids had. I didn't have new clothes in September, lunch money,

family vacations, or skiing privileges on Friday. I didn't own a stereo, a radio

or a ten speed bicycle until later, after I earned the money to get them while

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working at a camp in the kitchen and at a newspaper selling ads and laying

out ad copy. The beginnings of dignity from work, however, did not

ameliorate the horrendous shame being poor had instilled in me.

I thought our poverty, with all its accoutrements, was our fault; I knew I

had reason to be ashamed, and I was ashamed. The thrift shop, ill fitting old

women’s clothes I wore to school, the underwear for Christmas presents, the

government spam from the plain, dull silver cans and brown surplus military

packaging for powdered milk and eggs shamed me. My adoptive mother
saved bacon grease and scraps of soap. We were not allowed to touch food

cabinets or the refrigerator; hunger was a frequent dull companion. In the

winter, a lot, I was frequently cold, huddled under my blankets because of the

poorly fitting windows in their creaking casements; in the summer, the smell

of our flooded cesspool shamed me. My adoptive mother, in failing attempts

to “save room in the tank,” forbade us girls from putting tissue in the toilet

after we urinated; this shamed me most of all.

The worst moments of poverty came at the beginning of the school day

and the end of the school day. All students had to line up by grade and enter

the school single file, beginning with the first grade, and since I was in the

seventh grade, my wait and my agony stretched out for eternal moments. I

would shrivel inside my scratchy, mud colored long wool coat, in my ugly, old

lady dress with loose pouches where the former owner's breasts had

stretched the fabric, inside the out of fashion leotards and the ill fitting, ugly,

black shoes. It seemed as if every pair of eyes in every student in the school

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bored in on me, but I never could be sure, because my eyes were fixed upon a

point in the gray, frozen ground.

Upon entering the school, I would quickly strip off the coat, hold it in

front of my dress, and walk frantically down the hall as close to the wall as

possible. I would run to the coat rack, dispose of the coat, and sit, perfectly

still, behind my desk, relieved when the bell rang and all students were to be

quiet and facing the teacher at the front of the room.

I did not bring friends from school home—how could I explain? We

seemed to look like everyone else. We owned a house (or rather, the Bank

did)—how could one own a house and be poor? However, kids I knew were

poorer than us had houses too. This was rural poverty in northern New

Hampshire--one could own land and houses and be poor, because the houses

were barely worth the paint that held them together.

Still, shame—always that shame. I felt the way other kids looked at me,

talked to me, looked away from me. They acted like poverty meant I was an

amorphous flaw, and that's exactly what I believed to be the truth even as I

hated those kids for staring as they did. Their looks—perceived or real—

validated my shame.

That shame dictated actions in my life many times. It seemed I always

tried to escape the eyes of others, always ashamed at how others saw me.

My employment while attending college shamed me. My first year of college,

I worked at a dishwasher, then a worked at a waitress, but my second year of

college, the owner of the nursing home at which I worked as a cook (with an

illiterate assistant cook) fired me on New Year’s Day because I had agitated

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for a union, and I took a job as a janitor for the University of New Hampshire--

the school I attended.

I was assigned to work with Gladys and Katherine, two dead-broke poor

New Hampshire women, complete with missing teeth, shapeless clothes and ill

health. They were good to me, which didn't surprise me, but I was deeply

ashamed when other students, particularly students I knew, witnessed me

cleaning dormitory bathrooms, toilets and hallways or taking a break with

Katherine and Gladys. I learned quickly being a janitor means being unseen,
for students swarmed around like flies on occasion and never noticed I was

mopping their halls or scrubbing their toilets--even students I knew. I never

told one of my new college friends I cleaned their dorms.

I encouraged Gladys and Katherine to take college courses (the school

allowed them to for free as a job benefit) but they didn't seem interested.

Now I know they probably thought school was part of another, wealthier

world, but for me, they had grand plans. They always asked me if I did my

homework, did I need help with work so I could study, were my grades high.

They wanted me to win, to get out, to gain entrance into that world which

contained hope, opportunity, and growth.

That year, I earned my Associate's degree, but I didn't attend my

graduation--I was working, cleaning the dorms, bending my head, hoping to

remain unseen, while my peers and friends went off in their caps and gowns. I

think that moment epitomizes my struggle between the world to which I

belonged--Gladys' and Katherine's bone crushing poverty, or the world to

which I was beginning to belong--the academy. I was deeply ashamed of the

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former, and deeply insecure about the latter world, and that struggle took me

years--maybe even this moment--to resolve.

Like Gladys and Katherine, it was terribly difficult to believe I could, and

then had, left that world of poverty and low self esteem. While I attended

college, I felt like an imposter, a fraud, an interloper who had no business

being or belonging at a university.

After earning my Bachelor's, I took a job cooking in a kitchen, and a

journalist, Larry, I knew ran into me while I was washing dishes in the back--he
mistakenly thought the kitchen was the men's room. He looked at me in

shock, and said, "Can't you do better than that?" I looked down at my shoes,

spattered with debris, the shame burning my neck and my face. I couldn't

answer him.

I could and had done better than that; I had been offered a job as a

journalist, but I didn't have the money to buy a car; furthermore, I didn't

believe I could do the job. I refused a couple of other good jobs too, but I

wasn't ready to admit to myself I had the same problem Gladys and Katherine

had--poverty had not prepared me to succeed; I had no faith in myself.

A couple of lousy jobs and two years later, I avoid the problem by

returning to school to earn my Master's degree. Even though I taught school

at Emerson as part of my graduate work, my self confidence remained in the

toilet--in fact, after each class, I used to call my best friend and analyze every

single move I'd made teaching, anxious, unable to believe I'd taken correct

actions in teaching. High student evaluations did nothing for my confidence

at that time.

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 After earning my Master's, I took a job watering plants. Once again, that

lowly job felt like the real me, the place I belonged. That's when I admitted to

myself I had a problem. I didn't know how to find a decent job, I didn't feel I'd

adapt at a decent job, I didn't know what my Master's degree was realistically

worth.

Nevertheless, after standing on my back porch, praying, and agonizing

because I did not want my destiny filled with underachieving, miserable jobs, I

crafted a letter that demonstrated my writing and teaching skill and sent it
out to a bunch of schools. An insignificant community education program,

hired me to teach one writing class, earning $30 a week. Although the pay

was abysmal and I worked as a legal secretary to make ends meet, it gave me

the confidence I needed to start applying for teaching jobs at universities.

The University of San Francisco Director of Expository Writing had an

instructor cancel his contract two days before classes began. She literally

handed me the books and the schedule, and said, “Your class starts in two

days.” She didn't give me a chance to hesitate, and I walked away slightly

dazed. I didn't agree to take the job because I did not have the confidence,

but I sure had the job.

With what else would someone who grew up as I had leave home? Of

course I had no self confidence, no faith in myself or events around me. I had

been taught that. My parents had no self confidence or hope in the future.

My parents were deeply shamed by their poverty, and they taught me well.

They taught me being ashamed is more important than being proud, and no

job, no matter how well done, was something in which to be proud. My

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adoptive father did not take pride in his work--he was too busy hating the

boss's son, hating America, hating.

That hatred hurt me. That shame hurt me. When I realized I was

injured and needed to heal, I started to remember my grandfather, sitting on

our gray porch in the bright sun, telling me no matter what job one has, one

must it well, to the best of one’s ability. There's no shame then in working as

hard as one can to survive at whatever job one has.

That's exactly what I have done in all my jobs, lowly and otherwise. I
have always done my best, as a janitor, cook, waitress, bartender, hotel

manager, legal secretary, night watch woman, or teacher. I earned awards--

best employee of the month at a big hotel, praise from bosses, high

evaluations, and, at USF, the Distinguished Lecturer Award. I did the best I

could with what I had, every time. That's what makes me proud.

There are many people like me in the world, including two of the best

teachers at USF, two of my friends, and like me, one would never know they

had lived in crushing poverty as children. Like me, they have solved the

problem in their own way, and like me, they have talked and written about it,

and surrendered feeling ashamed of who they are and from where they

started.

Surrendering shame was a process, and to tell the truth, what happened

is one day I realized that awful shame had receded far enough so that it didn’t

poison me anymore. I think my hard work, my revelations, and my tears

melted it away so gently I scarcely noticed.

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 Now, I wouldn't take a job watering plants or cleaning toilets, but not

because I'd be ashamed. I know I'm worth more because that's what earning

money is--it's a statement of how much I think I'm worth. As an English

teacher, who would know where I began? The day I received my first teaching

assignment, I cried for that very reason as I walked the stairs away from my

Director's office. Who would have thought I would have advanced so far? It

certainly wasn't expected by my adoptive parents, my home community, or

even my country that I would amount to anything except another poor

person, fighting off the New Hampshire cold, blaming myself, and feeling

ashamed and helpless.

When I see my students now, I see that as a key difference. They are

not ashamed of their needs, nor do they lack confidence in their abilities.

They expect fortune will nurture them because it already has. Now I see my

experiences with poverty and struggles with poverty mentality have given me

lessons my students have yet to learn: our lives present difficulties, and our

strengths are greater and different than we realize or than they appear.

As it turns out, I understand my grandfather’s message now too. He

didn’t tell me to do a good job to advance or so that I would have pride like

my adoptive father’s pride. He told me to do a good job so that I would have

ethics, for he understood that character is the only solid foundation on which

to build confidence, self esteem, and strength. These are the lessons, along

with the beauty of sentences, I try to demonstrate to my students. Some of

them understand; some of them do not.

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 It doesn’t matter. Lessons arrive when students have a “need to know”;

eventually, we all need to know how alike and how fundamental our likeness

to one another is—that poverty or Pravda jeans do not separate or hurt us;

our minds and beliefs do. Once that is known, the rest, though difficult, is

actually easy: beliefs can be discarded as easily as empty Sunkist orange

cans; they can be developed as easily as opportunity is available for the

middle class in America. To help that process along, sometimes I tell my

students of my origins. It satisfies me to see the dissonance in their eyes; I

am a professor, after all; their beliefs and knowledge of poor people is limited

to stereotypical television models and homeless, inarticulate, alcoholics. And

sometimes, a student leaves me a note: “I had school lunches too,” or

“Shame is the word for me, too.” Our bond is in our existence at such an

environment, for we would not exist here had we not realized the prison of

belief is voluntary and extinguishable.

The topical limits of our beliefs do not matter in the end; it is the ability

to remove those limits where intellectual, scholarly growth can occur and real

gifts and perspectives can be offered. Diversity is not differing races,

genders, or sexual orientations. It is the differing beliefs, the challenging of

the limits of those beliefs, and the newer beliefs and perspectives that offer

the university or any other community its necessary vitality and new

directions.

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