My Parents Aren’t Rich

My parents live in a modest home in Northwest Ohio. They have lived in a total of fourteen homes in their 53 year marriage. They have lived all over the United States but they have come home to retire because they both grew up not too far from this area and now well into their 70’s they wanted to be closer to family, their sisters and brothers, and the people that they grew up with.

By some people’s standards one may think that they were rich, I assure you they are not. By other’s, the one’s that can afford a $350,000 home here in this area, they are just down right poor folk, well that isn’t the case either.

The truth is that even though people come over to borrow $10 here and $20 there, my parents are living off of my father’s Social Security income ONLY and my mom makes a couple of hundred dollars a month doing some sewing for my dad’s old friends in their old business that they both used to run out of the basement where my mother would sew up a storm and make all sorts of things for different companies and my father would do the shipping. He took on the shipping as his full time job, as well as salesman, when he retired from his carrier about ten years ago. None the less, after paying for material, we’re only talking a couple of hundred dollars a month to pay for electricity and heating, something that we all do now and then, you know, side jobs.

You see, to get to the house that they live in right now, my mom and dad BOTH had to have two jobs while me and my three siblings were growing up. At one point my dad even had to have three jobs, well, for over twenty of those years. They used to struggle so hard just to get by and to get the material to make us cloths, let alone buy us name brand cloths that it amazes me that they found the money to feed us too.

During all this time of raising children, these two people also had the gumption to remodel each of the houses that me and my three siblings lived in so that we could upgrade to a better house about every four or five years. Where my dad found the money I have no idea because as I write out my bills each month I struggle myself and while I own my own home, I worked two jobs for several years, my wife also works we have not the resources nor the time to fix up our home. We are however very thankful to the lord and our parents for what we have.

So now when these folks like my own godchildren, who have been raised on the welfare system since birth, along with their parents who collect Social Security too, without ever having paid into the system like my dad did for over fifty five years and I did for thirty years, come over to borrow a $10 bill, it still bothers just a me little because I don’t think that these folks understand that they in fact bring home more money each month than my mom and dad.

They also take advantage of my parents who have that Christian spirit in them and finding it hard to say no to a somewhat nice young person, especially when it is my Goddaughter. However my parents can be just too nice sometimes. There comes a time when you just have to be nice to some people and pleasant to everyone. That's where my grandmother's saying comes into play and has been my New Years resolution and I hope to spread it everywhere; it goes as follows: You can be Oh So Nice Or Oh So Pleasant; I Recommend Pleasant

That saying comes from Jimmy Stewart in the movie Harvey but it is so perfect and is so appropriate for my life….well everyone’s life for that matter. Anyhow, I can’t get this feeling of them being leaches off my mind while at the same time I do care for them dearly. There just comes a time when you just have to say no to people, especially when those people have been living off of the federal government since they were born and have never had a job. Their mother has never had a job, and I mean NEVER had a job…not one, and she still collects Social Security. The last I heard, you had to pay into the system before you could get paid back out from that system. Well, that’s a subject for another blog.

My whole point to this blog is that my parents are two of the most giving people you would ever want to meet but just because they live in a very nice house does not mean they are rich. They’re always working and they’re still in their 70’s. My dad is 76 and my mom is 73. Outside of a bad knee my dad is in pretty good health; well hearth attacks run in his family. Our family is suffering from my mom’s memory problems but her health is great. She keeps busy and is generally pretty happy, well ok she complains to me allot. All in all they are in remarkable health for folks in their mid 70’s but they are defiantly not rich. I wish they were, I would go with them and show them the world.

That’s The Lazlo Report for Friday January, 5th 2007

Mom Can Still Tell A Killer Story

Once in a great while my mom tells me a great story about her growing up in Kentucky, very poor, during the depression, but in a very loving home with her fourteen brothers and sisters, in a six bedroom home, where there was always one lucky child, the oldest, that got the single room by him or herself.

There was the story of the single pair of shiny new shoes that my Grandfather bought for my mother and her sister, of nearly the same age, that while they were moving to their brand new larger house they took turns wearing so that they could try and impress the people in other cars as they drove along the near baron dusty highway knowing that such behavior would land them a strapping from my Grandpa’s belt.. He was no preacher but they were brought up strict and to them THAT was sneaky. That’s what cracks me up, how far we have come in society and how right I think he was. He kept my mother an honest woman and nowadays that is not easy to find, if not impossible. BUT! ooh hot mama, a ten year old… “shake dem shoes”. Funny.

Then there was the time that my Uncle, the oldest, cut school to go coon hunting and while on the way home he met up with my mom. He was all wet and my mom asked why. Well, just like a coon does it went out on a tree that had fell onto a river bank so my uncle thought he had the coon trapped. NOPE. The coon just jumped onto the river bank so my uncle did the same thing, bad move on my uncle’s part because although he was hunting for coon, all he got was wet.

So when he got home he thought he was safe by just telling my Grandma that he fell into the creek on the way home, my mom just said “she didn’t see what happened” so she didn’t lie but on the other hand she just omitted the truth. However, he had made the mistake of leaving four rounds of 30/30 bullets in his overalls and he had put the overalls on the potbelly stove to dry off. So in about a half an hour later there go those bullets going off in the kitchen. Needless to say my uncle got his ass strapped many times for that and luckily no one got shot or hurt, well except for his my uncle’s ass and a few of his fifteen year old ass pimples too but that’s his personal business and we won’t go into that will we. :-).

Spending all this time with my mom as I have in the past several months is so worth it. To anyone that says that this 73 year old woman has memory problems I say go to hell because she can whip up a good one any time and still remember how to sew and fix a cup of coffee.. Hell, she has it spewing out of her; you just have to get her started like a gas pump. Today she told me about a sibling that pooped (yes, shit) on his sister’s barnyard animal as he hid in the loft of the barn, for no good reason, just twisted a little bit I guess. See why I can’t use real names! My family would burn me at the stake!!!

These stories are abundant and so long as mom is alive I plan to write more. We figured out that her medical condition is quite simple. She’s been doing so many things for so many people for so long that at age 73 she just has too many things on her plate and just hasn’t learned to say no. I am trying to teach her something that her mother taught me. “You can be Oh So Nice in this world Turry” she told me, she always called me Turbule Turry, “or you can you Oh So Pleasant, well I recommend Pleasant Turry”
Turry, she always called me Turry.

With that advice in hand I am trying to convince my mother to just be Oh So Pleasant every day so that she can have a pleasant day and she doesn’t have to be nice to everyone and say yes to everyone. I tell her just tell people that she doesn’t have time, and slow down. That way she will not be so frustrated all the time about having to do so much work every day. Friggin Christmas almost killed her I swear. Anyhow, more stories at another time.

That’s the Lazlo Report for Wednesday 1-3-2007