Grandpa and grandma ***not black *** sharecropped cotton in the Depression, as did many of the aunts and uncles. You started when you could see, and quit when you couldn't. Harvest window was short, and that's what you had to do.
@Free Vulcan EXACTLY! There was no federal money available to pay you to stay home and sleep late,so you got up off your ass and went to work at the break of dawn to try to earn as much money as possible to provide your family so THEY could go to school and have some hope of having a better life than you.
My father was a carpenter with a 3rd grade education because HIS father died when he was in the 3rd grade,and he was the oldest male child and had to go to work to support his family. He would have been truly screwed if he hadn't met and married my mother,who COULD read and write.
My older "brother" was no relation to me because I was adopted and his father was my fathers brother,and he and his wife were both killed in a car wreck,so my mother and father took him in to raise.
No such thing for him as insurance at the time.
I remember watching him get in the bathtub on his knees one Sunday morning when I was around years old,and watched him pull of his own teeth with slip-joint pliers and a nut pick. He did this because he didn't have enough money to miss a days work to go to a dentist,and he HAD to be at work on Monday morning.
And he DID get up out of bed the next morning and go work his carpenter job.
And....AFAIK,nobody thought this was special in any respect. You did whatever you had to to do to earn the money to feed and house your family,period!
In FACT,I was told when I was in the 3rd grade "Boy,you had better work hard at doing well in school because the day you turn 18,you are out of the house and on your own."
Which is why I enlisted in the army on my 17th birthday. My parents for some reason refused to allow me to be put in a special class with other students who were my age,but doing advanced studies,and regular classes just bored the snot out of me,so I figured if I enlisted I would at least have a job and a steady paycheck while I figured out what I wanted to do.
They were as serious as a heart attack about this,too. When I came home on leave after basic training,I discovered that every toy,book,model airplance,and any other possession I had owned had been thrown away. I didn't even have a pair of pants or a shirt to wear that wasn't army issue.
