Yoder, Terry, and Owsley

When Yoder talks about her attitude towards extraneous things that aren't essential to life, she says that the views she compared herself to are very separate worlds, and I'm inclined to agree. What she says is that even now after she can afford more than just staying warm and keeping fed, the Depression had such an impact on her that even now she lives with close to the bare minimum.

My grandparents also lived through the depression, but their response was the exact opposite of Yoder's. My grandfather loves eating as much as he can and cracking jokes about eating more. My mother tells me that when she was a kid and she didn't want something my grandparents made, my grandfather's response was, "Oh, good, that's more for me then." That's basically his attitude on life. Where Yoder shies away from things that are excessive, my grandparents all revel in those things. Perhaps it had to do with how badly the family was during the depression, as it did with the doctor's daughter. Obviously Yoder's family had trouble staying warm and fed. My grandparents couldn't have been doing much better. Perhaps fed and warm, but nothing else.

With the section on Terry and Owsley, I was interested in what Terry said about how the poor were treated versus how they are treated now. She says that back then, it was understood that the poor weren't at fault for their poverty. She said that today, people feel that poor people are just lazy and unmotivated. Having no experience with anything of the sort, I wouldn't have any first-hand evidence, but I have to wonder if this is really true or if it's just one of those "back in the good ol' days" musings which the elderly seem to love doing. Obviously there's more opportunity in this day and age, but when you think about it, there has to be a lower class for the upper class to exist. It's the idea of the Golden Mean. There will always be people who aren't as fortunate as we are, and we should never just assume it's their fault. My other worry is that it is just a general feeling which she describes and not something which she actually has evidence of.