My grandparents were in farm country and their house used a wood stove to heat the kitchen. Like still to this day in 2024. They haven't even upgraded to a window unit for there. The upstairs of the house has no heating or cooling unless it's a window unit. The primary source for cooling throughout the house is tree shade or floor fans if there is no window unit. The living room on the first floor got an oil furnace for heating sometime in the 70s or 80s. They didn't have an indoor bathroom, clothes washer, or dryer until like the late 90s or early 2000s when an addition was built on that included a full bath, washer and dryer hook up, and a small living room that had a wall unit for AC/heat.
Nah never drank out of them. We’d just turn them on and let them shoot water across the bathroom. My buddy didn’t know what they were used for either. It’s not like his parents showed him or his sisters how to use a bidet. We just messed with them as water fountains and laughed at spraying the walls and stuff from them.
One of my friends dad had a card slot installed in an old as computer. Looked like a floppy drive. He'd pop in the cards they would put into satellite TV receivers and basically rewrite it to allow for every single channel. Illegal as hell of course but nobody paid to watch any PPV. All money went to pizza and drinks.
I don't think it was an "indicator of wealth" so much as a "barometer of poverty," but some of my friends didn't have to roll pennies or take bottles back for spending money.
So I grew up in one of the poorest parts of NJ, meanwhile I have family in Appalachia in TN and my great grand parents lived in shack in the mountains with (I think I was young when I went) no running water and a wood burning stove. So I’ve seen poor, but god damn I never really thought about how lucky I was to have grown up in shit hole NJ vs shit hole TN and some of you guys are making that really apparent.
I didn’t. I would have but I didn’t. I didn’t know what they were used for but I was more interested in the cases of Sunkist in the garage. I don’t remember ever really drinking water as a kid. I’d go to the hose outside if it was hot but that was like last ditch effort not to die.
On the topic of reading as a kid and being dirt poor, I wish I still had the set of encyclopedias my grandmother got for me. You could get one volume a week with your groceries if you spent like $20 or whatever. I would just read them from front to back. Between those and the set of children's versions of classic lit (Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, etc.), I knew about the world. Those encyclopedias might be the biggest reason I'm relatively (Muncie scale) well off
No offense, but there isn’t a poor rural area of NJ anywhere close Appalachia USA. It just doesn’t even fit in the same stratosphere.
This would be a good topic for a wholly separate thread. When we had a death of Sports illustrated thread last month, I mentioned how there was no SI for Kids in the early 80’s, so at second and third grade I was reading stuff way over my level from great writers like Frank Deford and George Plimpton. It definitely put my reading level above my peers.
I remember being young enough to not understand that Sidd Finch wasn't real, but old enough to read the article. I also read all the books my sister and parents read. I was reading Sweet Valley High books in elementary, along with John Jakes books, James Michener books, early Stephen King, and other pretty adult authors. I remember reading Smart Women, because I though it was about another Judy Blume kids book, in 4th grade. It was NOT a kids book. But we just hammered the local library, too. Like 7 books every couple of weeks.
New one: If your first name is Gibraltar and it’s paired with a last name that is generally associated with wealth.
i got a handjob in the western sizzlin kitchen at like midnight one night in 2010 never ate there though
When I was a child, if I went to a friend’s house and their dad drank Heineken, the Dutch imported beer, I thought they were rich. Does that help?
after visiting a friend's house this weekend, gonna add induction ranges to the list. i don't think their kids know not everyone has them.