No, this is not like the Great Depression and hopefully never will be. But it is still a Depression. In the last few months, I have met a family with two young boys, who have lost everything and are living in an old rundown motel off a major highway. They wash clothes in their bathroom. The kids play in the room where they can keep an eye on them and everyday, the husband walks to the 'Workforce Community Center' looking for employment, if only for a day.
I also met another family. The husband was a well paid ITT employee. Well enough to have moved into a very plush mobile home on 5 acres, hoping to build his dream house in the future. Only with his wife, himself and one younger son living there. As of today, his older daughter, older son, and another daughter with husband and child have moved in. He lost his job and no one in this massive household has a job right now. He has been served his third foreclosure notice.
Also, I have talked to a homeless man with a bike and a dog, who lives in the woods. And for some reason I envy him. Maybe, it's because he has no debts.
I count myself lucky. I am an optimist and a realist. Sounds like a battle of the brain here, but it works for me. Times were getting tough, my work hours were sliced and diced to a point I was calling in to see if I should even go into work each day. It's an hour drive for me and one day it happened. I was trying to put $5 of gas in the old car with just change, no bills, just to get to work. When I got there, I was told there was only a half hours worth of work at the most. Why I wasn't told when I called in, I don't know. Yep, I got angry but didn't raise a fuss like I should have. With my job as bad as it was, we also were going though mortgage and credit card woes.
My husband, son and I had tried to work it out with our mortgage company to save our home. We qualified for a loan modification. What a joke. If we were struggling to make the payment each month, what reasoning did the mortgage company have, to come up with a payment costing us $140. more a month? So we decided to try a short sale. We listed and moved to an old mobile home out in the country, hoping that selling an empty house would move faster than one with our furniture in it. No water or sewer bills, no phone bills or cable bills. Cell phone and satellite TV only. We were that far out. In fact we had to go outside to use the cell phone. That's the day, November 1st, 2008, I lost my job of 8 years.
Luckily, after a massive layoff where my husband works, he was able to count himself one of the lucky ones to keep his job of 12 years. I collected unemployment and looked for work everywhere, even the Workforce. Nothing out there. The day we moved into that place, I started a 1/4 acre garden, depending on Mama Bess, my grandmother from above, for guidance and it worked. I had a ton of vegetables. Delivering fresh vegetables and fruit from the orange trees on the property, helped mend fences with credit holders who demanded payment now. They seemed more willing to work out deals and pay back plans. I sold some vegetables, but mostly we lived off them and canned what we couldn't eat. I say we became semi-vegetarians out there. Internet was a no go for a few months. We couldn't afford satellite internet and connection way out there was near impossible, which will explain why past messages on this blog are so old.
All was working out fairly well, until 2 weeks in May when our landlord informed us, he was losing his house and 2 of his other rental houses to foreclosure. He was going to have to move his family of 4 with very young children, back into the place we were living in, since it was the only place he owned that was paid off. We managed to find another place fairly quickly for $50. less a month and moved out leaving him the 1/4 acre garden.
I know my story is long and hopefully, not boring. Part 2 in the next coming days. It's weed the garden time.
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