I’m sure that has happened to you. I was following a family conversation on facebook and a reference was made to me. This conversation was a potential minefield so I stayed out of it. (Just in case any family member involved in that discussion should happen to read this, I am still staying out of it!) I commented just to keep the facts straight, but it got me thinking. There are those who would say that is a dangerous thing, but I did it anyway!
Perhaps you are wondering, “What was said that would make you think?” It was suggested that because we lived in a house provided by the church we can’t relate to people who struggle having enough money. My initial response was, “HA! Obviously, you don’t understand – the pastor in a parsonage is there because neither he nor the church has much money.”
But it got me to thinking about my life. And money. Right now, we have way more money than ever in either of our lives. I guess we both grew up middle class, but middle class in the 50s and 60s was a little different. I like to tease Mary because when she was young she got to go to a pool. I tell her, “You grew up rich. We were so poor we didn’t even know people with a pool!”
I don’t remember much before being 10 years old or so (a lot goes into that and I would write about it, only I don’t remember!). I do remember Hawai’i. There were 8 children and two parents. All living in a small three bedroom house. Our next door neighbors, the Gumapacs had 13 people living in a slightly larger house (and they had cousins in Honolulu, 18 of them living in two adjoining apartments). I shared a room with two brothers. But my sisters had it really rough: 4 girls and a baby in one room! I don’t know how my parents provided enough food for us with only my Dad working. We never went out to eat, probably in part because they had not yet invented all the fast food joints we have now. Our big night out was going to a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. We could watch them make the pizza. I always got a pepperoni and green pepper pizza, even though I didn’t like green peppers. No one ever bothered to tell me I could order the pizza minus the peppers! We got most of our clothes from the Salvation Army, but so did a whole lot of other people. When I was in the 6th grade I was a Junior Police Officer (crossing guards). We had to wear khaki pants, which in those days was poor man’s clothes. Then they changed it to blue pants. Rather than buying me a new pair of pants my mother dyed my khakis blue. I took a lot of ribbing the next time I wore my “new” blue pants! When we got into high school we began to get store bought pants. And since most people had very little money school lunches were subsidized and only cost 25¢, and everyone had to spend a week working in the cafeteria. But we were happy. I knew there were some folk who had more than we did but it didn’t bother me – I could beat most of them up, I mean, most everybody was in the same condition we were. Beginning with my 9th grade year, my Dad wanted me to go to school in the next town. So he got a “District Exception.” What he didn’t get was a ride. This meant I had to find my own way from Kaneohe to Kailua, so I hitch-hiked to school. In those days I hitch-hiked everywhere. But it is true, we endured all this while living in Hawai’i!
My Dad died and after my junior year we had to move to Nashville. What culture shock! The first summer we lived with my Grandparents. Some of us slept in a travel trailer in their driveway. We must have moved up in the world because we rented a house then my Mother bought a house. January after I graduated (another long story) I went off to the University of Tennessee at Martin. I came home in the summer and went back that fall. While at school this time my Mother re-married and moved to California. So there I was, stuck in Martin, TN. In the midst of all this I had met Mary and we had begun to talk about marriage. Long story short, I dropped out of school and began working at a Sonic Drive In.
Then we were married. I was 20, she was 19. I was working at Sonic and she was still in nursing school. Like college students everywhere, we had no money. When she graduated we moved to Memphis so I could pursue my schooling at Mid-South Bible College while she got into nursing. When she got pregnant I had to go to work full time and school part time while she stayed home with our first daughter. Eventually I graduated and headed off to the ministry.
My first church, Pensacola, was very small. As was the salary. We were there for a couple of years and then moved to Macon. A bigger church but not by much. After 3 years we moved to York. This was a little bigger church and more financially stable. All three churches provided a parsonage. This was part of the older way of doing things. But we weren’t getting rich. The unspoken arrangement was, “We can’t offer you a lot of money but we can offer a house for you and your family.” But you know what, I wasn’t in the ministry for the money. Oh, I know all about how a lot of pastors are doing quite well, thank you very much. We just wanted to serve the Lord. We ate. We all wore clothes. We were happy. As little as we had, our children had way more than I had growing up. My Dad had something he called the “Weak Week” box. If you were too weak to pick up a toy then it was put in the box for a week. Oh how that killed us because we didn’t have many toys. I tried that with my girls. They wouldn’t put something away and into the box it went. A month later we discovered it was still there! They had so many toys they never missed it. The “weak week” box didn’t last long at my house.
I’m sure we could have used and would have enjoyed more money when I was growing up and when we were raising our girls. But we were happy. It is true that at one point Mary went back to work part time as a nurse and we used that money for vacations and extras. And since we had made a commitment to being home with our children, I stayed home with the girls when she would work. Now we have more money than ever. Of course, the children are all grown and gone. Most of them far away! Of course with more money comes more taxes, ugh!
But let me stress again, this is not a thinly veiled response to that facebook conversation I alluded to. Everybody has to make their own choices and live with the consequences. It just got me thinking about our lives. We didn’t have a lot when we were raising our girls and even less when we were young. But we had enough. I have never been that interested in having a lot of money, anyway. Good thing, huh? ’cause we never did. Until now, or so the tax man sayeth!
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