Born Poor and Grateful

On one of my recent playdates (translated ‘coffee and chat’ session), a friend was talking about being raised poor and not knowing it. His father, along with his Uncles, all worked at the Fire-stone Tire factory in Akron, Ohio.

It was a hard, honorable job but one that didn’t pay a lot, especially for a household of many children and a mother who didn’t work outside of the home. My friend’s situation was no different than the Irish, Polish, Black and Eastern Europe neighbors in his community. It simply was what it was.

My friend casually commented how he remembered having to put cereal box cardboard into his tennis shoes because he only got one pair of shoes for all summer. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to college but fortunately, he felt ‘the calling’ and went into the seminary instead. His brothers and sisters weren’t so lucky. They barely finished high school and went directly to work.

My own story of growing up poor has been chronicled in many blogs over the years. Again, it wasn’t something my friends and I were acutely aware of aside from the lack of a family car, summer vacations or material things around the house. Most of us started working at an early age and accepted that as ‘par for the course.’

Sharon grew up, doing chores at six years old, on the farm. If the bulk tank wasn’t cleaned twice a day, her dad couldn’t sell his milk as grade A and there wouldn’t be a milk check at the end of the month. She remembers growing up with no sink in the kitchen but a shiny new bulk tank instead in the barn.

I’ve told both my kids, that compared to some of our relatives, they were lucky to be born without a silver spoon lodged… as some of their cousins were. It made them more self-reliant and determined to forge their own path to adulthood.

This idea of growing up poor is a central theme in one of my first novels ‘Love in the A Shau.’ There are certain advantages of being ‘born hungry’ as Daniel likes to say. I didn’t have a choice growing up but I’m not sure I would have changed a thing even if I could have. I’ve learned over the years that ‘growing up hungry’ is not a bad thing.

The Case Against Millennials

Recently, someone near and dear to my heart was complaining about the unfairness between my generation and her own; the millennials. She felt that it had been much easier for my generation to succeed in our world than it would be for her and her friends in theirs. She thought that all of the challenges my friends and I faced such as getting an education, student debt, raising a family, buying our first house and saving for retirement was a cake walk compared to what her generation now has to face. She questioned whether she and her friends would be able to enjoy all the amenities they’d come to expect in American life.

I had to smile because it seemed like Deja-vu all over again. I’d heard the exact same comments from my aunts and uncles, factory bosses and other older adults complaining about the very same thing years ago. Their generation had it tough while we were just coasting along. They knew hardship and the depression and hunger and world wars. We were fat and happy and unmotivated. 

Really! I’m guessing that dialogue has been repeated for decades from one generation to the next and will probably continue to be bantered back and forth well into our foreseeable future. It truly is a generational thing.  Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed. One generation after the next keeps pontificating the same old tired rhetoric and current jargon.

Yet even as these echo-boomers and members of generation Y grouse and complain as we did about the older generation and how things are tougher for them now, I’d like to believe there is a subtle difference. As parents of the millennial generation, we’re still there supporting them, helping out with their kids and listening to their complaints with a smile and answer ‘Yeah I know, every generation says the same thing.’ 

I’ll be the first to admit that some things have changed since I was in my twenties and thirties and its happening in my own backyard. Growing up home ownership was always presented as a great prize of adulthood. But that attitude toward owning property has changed.  More than a quarter of the people who are new to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are between the ages of 20 and 34. The percentage of Americans under the age of 35 to own a home fell to 36 per cent last year, the lowest level on record. Studies also seem to indicate a very non-committal non-traditional attitude among millennials toward everything from jobs to marriage to home ownership.

 

Yet for all the differences there are startling similarities beneath the surface. 

We had Vietnam. They had Iraq and Afghanistan. We had marijuana and cocaine. They have meth, molly and other designer drugs. 

 

The Triangle Bar - West Bank - Minneapolis, MN circa 1970

We had the Triangle Bar and classical music of the fifties and sixties. We had Hippie peace and love and the ghost of Bob Dylan past and wonderful echoes of the Beatles. They have multiple downloads of current trends in music.

We had our neighborhood bar. They have craft beer, food trucks, rooftop restaurants and their own version of the neighborhood gathering spot.

We didn’t harbor the absurd idea that we had to lose our virginity by thirteen just to fit in or find true love by age twenty-one and every other cliché pontificated by Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazine. Somehow for us it was more pure, a bit naive and less pressured.

Of course, we didn’t have the intrusion of the internet or the scare of AIDs either.

We had telephones on a cord and phone booths and Western Union. They grew up with the Mac, laptops, the IPhone and the internet. 

We had the occasional bad weather. They’ve got to deal with climate change, disappearing pensions and higher prices for everything.

After high school, I couldn’t wait to get out of the city. These new millennials are embracing city life, the warehouse district and urban villages. Where have all the Hippies Gone.

Yet for all the surface differences, little has really changed over the decades. What goes along; comes along…just give it enough time. Below the surface, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference. So many of the circumstances facing millennials as young adults have faced us too. 

Yes, housing is more expensive. The price of goods is more expensive. But salaries are higher and so it the value of many items. Attitudes about social mores and standards are constantly changing and evolving. 

Now, as back then, the only constant seems to be change.

So what is the answer here? Maybe it is to wait another twenty or thirty years until it all comes around once again. At some point in the future, the millennials' children will probably be lamenting the same concerns that they are piling up on us now. Especially my three granddaughters who intend to make this world their own…on their terms and their conditions. I hope I’m around to hear the comments from my own two kids when their children are in that position. I’ll try to remain calm and not roll my eyes in wonderment and suppressed joy at the irony displayed.

Yet in the end, even as things go in and out of favor, the bottom line is still the same. 

If you work hard, you can succeed…no matter what generation you are a part of. The basic tenants of success never go out of style. 

I tried to press hard on that point in my novel Love in the A Shau. My female protagonist, Colleen, says about her old boyfriend: “Daniel was born hungry. I had to learn to be hungry.”

The same theme runs through my (still under pen) trilogy called “Debris.” In it, my protagonist Robert must face numerous obstacles toward success. Hard work, determination and perseverance are his only tools in that quest.

Napoleon Hill said it best in his book: “Think and Grow Rich.” The principles of success haven’t changed over the decades, only the width of ties and length of skirts. Work hard and eventually you’ll reach your goal. 

So that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Three Strikes - I'm Getting Closer

Failure can wrap itself in a cloak of many different colors. Unexpected job loss and life-changing events can become pivotal points in one’s life. It’s that water-shed event where what was once present is now past and the future is nothing more than a dim hope or vapid expectation on the horizon.

In her new book entitled: ‘The Up Side of Down,’ author Megan McArdle says that: “Getting to the upside of down often means letting go of your instincts, ignoring conventional wisdom and leaping for something no one has done before.” It’s changing course in mid-stream and forging ahead despite the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.

Ed Catmull is one of the founders of Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In his new book ‘Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Catmull says that the ultimate goal here is to uncouple fear and failure. It’s changing that stigma that failure is bad and a sign of weakness. We must recognize that mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. Instead they are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. Echoing the mantra of many forward-thinking ventures: “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I’ve been there many times in my life; three in particular stand out. Yet in each instance I never knew just how fortuitous my failure would turn out to be. I never planned to fail so there was never some grand plan to deal with my stumble. Instead some innate survival instinct kicked in and pushed me forward. At the time I didn’t see it as a failure as much as a minor distraction like a toe-stumble off the starting line.

                                   

The first failure was running out of money at a private college and transferring to the University of Minnesota. While a large University may work for a lot of other students, it was an unmitigated disaster for me. Beginning with 2500 students in the Introduction to Psychology class to the smallest class of 300 in Economics, I was lost before I stepped foot on campus. I lasted two quarters and was politely asked to ‘take a break’ by the Admissions Office.

           

Two weeks after dropping out, I got my draft notice and spent the next two years in this man’s army. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was two years of learning to live on my own, continuing my focus on education, writing, travel and the beginning of collecting a lifetime of writing material (only I didn’t know it at the time.)

                                               

My second failure came in my boss’s office at precisely 8:34 a.m. on July 23^rd, 1993…but who’s counting. It began with the usual pleasantries and then quickly evolved into “…(blah-blah-blah)…so we’re going to have to let you go.” And with that non-descriptive lame-ass explanation I was out of my job of 13 years in public television.

Office politics aside, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. In reality it became a clean break from the old and mundane and political to a forced self-reliance on my own skills to survive in the marketplace. It made me focus on my business and real estate investments instead of five year forecasts just to satisfy my CFOs love of graphs and charts. And again I never looked back.

My third and final failure (thus far) came in the form of an obnoxious e-mail from an ego-inflated anal pretentious individual who didn’t like the video programs I was producing for local community television broadcast. His criticisms were ripe with subjective opinions and self-induced visions of grander. It was at that point that I declared to my computer that “I don’t need this _____ anymore” and with that eloquent announcement, I folded up my video production and distribution business and focused my energies on my writing.

Yet in retrospect each stumble, loss, rejection, distraction and life-changing event in my past has nudged me toward this stage of my life where storytelling in multiple disciplines has become my new passion. 

Catmull reminds us that: ‘we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.’

DenisJLacomb.com

Some folks are much quicker at failing their way to success. It took me fifty plus years and a life-time of learning just to get where I am now. Slow and steady with a couple of stumbles along the way…just like my writing. I’d love to say it’s all part of some grand plan but it’s not. Just one more attempt at doing what I love best and stumbling every couple of steps on the way to success.