Originally posted by alex_ant
Why, when I was a boy, my parents could barely afford to keep me fed or to put shoes on my feet, much less buy me a computer! My brother and I had to trod 20 miles to school in 70-below-zero temperatures, through 3-foot-deep snow drifts and howling, typhoon-like winds! The trip was uphill, both ways, mind you, and we were without shoes or even coats to cover our backs! And we liked it. We loved it! The gangrene and tuberculosis that followed were not enough to dampen our spirits.
Why, I remember at Christmas, my brother and I would awaken early to discover we had each a ripe apple and four plump jelly-beans in our stockings! We had to work even on Christmas, though. We would chop fire-wood and clean the out-house, and after pa had slaughtered dinner, we would skin it and gut it. Ahh, those were the days! My brother and I were nary young muskrats, living hand-to-mouth, and we liked it. We loved it. We savored every gosh-darn minute of it!
Kids these days, I tell you, they don't know what it's like to have to break their backs for every nickel they earn. My first job was at the age of 13, loading hay onto the tractor for a fellow farmer of pa's. At the end of each day, this farmer would say, "Look here," and I would open my hand and into it would drop a shiny dime. "Now, you save this, you hear?" He would say. And I did just that. By the time I was 15, I had almost forty dollars all saved up. Kids these days, they can throw forty dollars around like they can a rusted bottle-cap, but I sure as sam-hill couldn't! I had to earn it! I had to work for it! And I liked it. I loved it. Kids these days, I tell you, they don't understand.
Alex (That's MISTER Alex to you, sonny)
