Oh, sure. Still am as matter of fact.

i want to see your avatar unload a tactical 12 ga to see those boobs in action

if thats your wifey ,please accept my apologies ,and allow me to re-phrase

i want to see your wifey unload a tactical 12 ga to see those boobs in action

my house was so old and run down we had to walk up hill both ways in 4 feet of snow to get to the living room

We wuz so poor that on the night of Christmas Eve, I'd pray to wake with a hard on so I'd get something to play with.  

Naw.  I was raised middle class.  Deddy had a good job in a place where the cost of living is very low.

No man who has friends and family is truly poor.   Happiness is not money, its love.

By GD standards, this.

That said, I'm not rich, but somewhat well off by local standards, which are a fair bit lower than the national average.

At one point we were on welfare and had no furniture in our small apartment in the ghetto. Now my mom travels the world with her small business she built and I’m doing ok. We took that government cheese and made something with ourselves through hard work.

Thanks Mom.

Not hard in WV. Standard is low there. I am CONSTANTLY reminded of how much "better off" I am here than people back home, in a completely insulting, intellectual holier than thou manner.
They lock completely the fuck up when I tell them about how many people do all they can top get out, only to find that living among people like you (referring to the city, intellectual elite libs I work with) is completely and utterly insufferable, because of your invasive, meddling, taxing, fucking with people. I'd rather live on less in a free state than in your leftist shang ri la. They can't process it. Clearly, I must be fucking stupid, a neandrthal, and just need to be shown the error of my ways, and how lucky I am to live in their world.

Another part of growing up poor. We didn't have hot water because we couldn't afford propane, somebody cut the line coming out of the propane tank and my grandma couldn't afford to fix it. So, to take a bath we would heat up water on an electric stove or by the fireplace in the winter and bathe in a wash pan by the fireplace, take a blanket and drape it over chairs for privacy. Also in winter we would shut off the living room and just heat it instead of the entire house because of the holes in the floor.

Dirt poor, second hand cloths and welfare.

Well aware of how low that bar is. In some counties, you'd have to bury it to get it any lower.  

And I agree, it's one of the reasons I never left, just moved to a slightly better part. There's not a ton of money here, but cost of living is low and life is (mostly) peaceful. I can't imagine dealing with insufferably condescending liberals on a regular basis.

My father was a SMSgt in the Air Force. We were solid middle class.

I grew up poor. I know what it was like to be picked on in school because of my clothes and where I lived. When I was 2 my father was burned in a refinery fire and spent months in the hospital. He refused the disability saying he wouldn't take government welfare. He refused to let my mother get a job. Being burned bad he couldn't do alot so I lost my childhood to chores and work. I stood watch  way too often as my mom would sneak into my grandparents house to get 2 pieces of bread so my sister and I could split a sandwich with butter. We lived in a trailer on my grandparents property . Used their well for water. During the fur boom of the late 70s I ran trap lines starting before I was 10. Coon, fox, mink & muskrat. I had to help run coonhounds because my dad still couldn't lift his arms. This was our main source of income for the year. I was lucky my grandpa was unbelievably skilled at trapping and taught me. I started working on farms at 10. I had to provide meat for the family and outlawed more deer than anyone would believe. I hate trout and trout fishing to this day because when I wasn't working I'd have to catch them for dinner. I still have the old Remington 22 rifle that I used to feed the family for years. It was about the only friend I had growing up. My uncle had a large farm but dad being too proud to ask for anything so he dropped me off in the middle of the night to get whatever was in season to can for the year. Mainly corn, beans & strawberries. I had a near death experience in a sweet corn patch with a bear with cubs. I got mighty good at cutting trees and swinging a splitting ax so we had heat. After living like that for years my father finally healed enough he could go back to work and things got better for them. I think back to those days and I feel bad for my mother. The stress and tears she shed trying to keep her kids fed haunt me. Now that I'm getting a bit older the pain from a couple untreated broken bones is really bothering me. This is just a few highlights. It would be a book to cover what I remember if being poor.

My friend down the street dad was a AF MSgt assigned in some capacity to AF1 and they always seemed to do very well for themselves, I wonder if he got paid more.

I remember he had personalized signed pics of the POTUS he had served over the years on his living room wall from Ike to Nixon.

You put my poor childhood into perspective. And yet I'm sure a leftist will still say what you accomplished and have acquired as an adult we're due to "Privilege" and not hard work or sacrifice.

We were low end middle class. We worked all the time. I guess when I was in the 5th or 6th grade, Dad got us in the lawn mowing business. So after school, Dad would come home, we'd load up lawn mowers on a our trailer, climb in the back of his pickup truck and go mow grass for people until dark. We had a brick house, always had one "new" car we were making payments on.

We'd clear brush for people, haul off trash, trim trees, whatever to make money. The air conditioner on our house always seem to be broken. He got it fixed about the time I went away to college, then I ended up in a dorm room without air conditioning in Texas. We had a septic tank for our house that was always full of rainwater whenever we got more than a 1/2" of rain. When I came home at Christmas from college, I had to help him dig and install the city sewer line for the house. When we hooked it up, I ran into the house and took the most refreshing and satisfying shit of my life.

That was about the time my Dad started his own business, I work for him and we still work all the time and we do fairly well. My parents went on vacation in Europe about 10 years ago. About 3 years ago, my mother wanted to buy a Cadillac, so Dad bought her one. Then some guy rear ended it, drove off. Did about $10k worth of damage. My mother had it fixed at the dealership and traded it in on the spot, saying she wasn't going to drive a Cadillac that had been wrecked.

I guess if you grow up, poor white kids working in the cotton fields and you finally work your way into some money, you can do whatever you can afford. Yeah, my parents picked cotton and they aren't assholes.

My father was a college science teacher. One of the perks was free meals in the cafeteria. We ate breakfast and dinner there ever day, and lunch on the weekends. Weekday lunch was eaten at the grandparents houses.

My neighbor bought my first pair of shoes. And our swingset.

The social worker who came over to verify that my mother ran an acceptable daycare stated that we should be on welfare and food stamps. My mother ran a daycare out of our home until Joe Lamb decorated our bathroom walls with his turds and started licking them off the walls. Every one of her clients made far more money than us.

I remember seeing the street through the rust holes under the floor mats in my dads old Plymouth. We called it the Brown Bomber.

I grew up poor. Started working at 12 to help support the family.  I remember at one time having one pair of jeans, two t shirts and one pair of shoes for school.  I would wash them twice a week, and just try not to get dirty.  I had an old pair of pajamas bottoms I would wear when doing my laundry.  

I had an amazing childhood though.  Lots of good memories and still consider my siblings my best friends. I somehow managed to work my way through college and am able to provide much better for my children.  I still have my older children work, and they are putting themselves through college as well, but at least I am there to help them when money is tight.

My life got better because my my mom and step-dad cared enough.

I remember the one, shitty 1970's itchy, no R-value G.I. U.S. Army wool blanket my father gave us to sleep under in cold, ass PA.  I'd wake up at 3 a.m. and stand on a 1920's era heating grate inside a coat rack praying for dawn.

There are several of us in this thread that meet my definition of "growing up poor' and to those who fit that definition and still have minor kids at home, don't make life too easy on them! I made that mistake, I was determined for my kids to not have to do and go through some of the things I did growing up and I made sure they didn't. In hindsight, I wish I had made things a little harder on them. Even though they are both grown men now, honestly, they are spoiled. I wouldn't change a single thing about the way I grew up because it made me the man I am today. Life can be a BITCH and its not always fair, the sooner kids learn that, the better off they are in the long run.
I can remember going to school with less than 50 cents in my pocket to buy lunch with. Unfortunately lunch was $1.00. 7th through 12th grade all went to the same school, so we did the class changes, had break, etc.... Id take the 50 cents and on morning breaks or before school started some of us would "pitch quarters". I got real damned good at pitching quarters, I can promise you that! More days than not I had to win my damned lunch money! If I couldn't win enough to buy my lunch some days I didn't eat.