I Know, Poverty Sucks

I don’t ever really talk about these things, but I really do know how badly poverty sucks, and I was kind of lucky because it was rural poor, not city poor.

The more I work on poverty, the more I get criticized by some. People currently in poverty tend to think I don’t know what it is like. Those not in poverty tend to not understand why I care. Maybe this will help people understand.

Just so you know, I don’t tell you this so you feel sorry for me. I’m so over growing up poor I don’t think about it a lot. And yet it is with me every day. And I didn’t avoid telling people this because I was embarrassed – to me it is just life, which isn’t fair. I’m telling you because I want people to understand. Many people wouldn’t experience something like this (80 – 90% don’t). And for those who do, its different for everyone. But, I tell my story so people think about how poverty impacts people.

So, here’s my story.

I was born in Madison. My birth name is Liebenstein. My mom was a bookkeeper and I honestly don’t know what my dad did. I went to kindergarten in Waunakee where we rented until we bought our first home. We were middle class. My dad was in the Jaycees. We went to church, donated our 10%. Had cookouts with the neighbors in our middle class neighborhood.  All was good.

In school they thought I was not very smart, until they figured out it was my eyesight. Then I quickly excelled in school. Mostly because my grandmother was a teacher and she was constantly working with me (buying me math and reading books) and instilling in me that once I learned something, that was the one thing no one could ever take away from me. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in Waldo, Wisconsin running around on the Christmas tree farm and apple orchard and picking berries and grapes and currents. I loved being there. I was my grandmothers favorite according to all my cousins. They might be right. I loved my grandma and grandpa like crazy and loved being at their house and would spend weeks at a time in the summer.

When I was still in kindergarten we moved to Wisconsin Dells, my parents bought a campground and we owned a bar and baitshop and did boat and cabin rentals. Until I was ten we lived there and I helped run the bait shop and earned a little money. I was in charge of inventory and deciding what we needed to buy (marshmallows, graham crackers, paper plates, ketchup, mustard, bug spray, etc.) and waiting on customers (including selling them worms and minnows! yuck!) It was an awesome place to live, I got to play with all the tourist kids and we were friends with all the rich neighbors from Illinois  who had cabins on the river. I had a friend that had horses and we would go riding. The neighbors had go-carts. The Wisconsin River was right out our front door. Still completely awesome.

When I was about 10, my father got into a drunk driving accident (I think, I was little, I just know he crashed the car and was in the VA Hospital) and then also got pulled over for drunk driving . . . while driving a school bus. (Yeah, not embarrassing at school at all.)   My parents divorced soon after that and while there were some attempts, I really never saw him to any extent again . . . until . . . I’ll fill you in on that later.

We moved to Saukville, Wisconsin. A place with more bars than churches. My mom worked in a factory and long hours and she hated it. I think she even had two jobs for a while. Our diet consisted of hotdogs, mac-n-cheese, grilled cheese and soup as far as I remember. I went to a Lutheran School in Grafton where my aunt and uncle were both teachers. I think we lived in low-income housing (section 42?), but that lasted only a year.

My mom moved us back to Wisconsin Dells, where I went to school for a year before my mom got re-married. They got married in the yard at the place we rented, I think my mom made her own cake or had a friend do it.

Then, we moved to a farm in Portage. By this time, I was a teenager and hated everything! Especially the pig farm we lived on and anything to do with it. Unlike running around on my grandparents hobby farm, this was real work. Bailing hay, feeding the animals and doing chores before and after school. Carrying buckets of water when the hoses froze, picking corn by hand when the corn picker broke, hoeing fields full of potatoes and pumpkins. Doing dishes every night after dinner. Stacking and carrying in wood. I worked hard, from 5 or 6 am to 7 or 8 at night. Then, I did my homework.

Our house was wood heated only. There was a potbellied Franklin stove in the middle of the living room. I slept upstairs. In the winter, sometimes the snow would come through the roof or under the eaves and I would sometimes wake up with snow on the blankets.  Birds got in the house all the time.

I hid in my room when I could. Read a lot of books. Listened to my stereo. Did my homework because I wanted good grades so I could get the hell out here! Like I said, I was a teenager and I hated everything.

I got free lunch tickets at school. My locker was right across from from where you “paid” for your tickets. When you go to the window they had to look up your name and it always felt like you stood there forever waiting . . . and then they would hand you your tickets that were a different color. I hated standing in line and having people behind me hear me asking for free lunch tickets, so I’d wait til just before the bell rang and the line was gone and quickly get my tickets and then run to class down the empty hallway.

We got free government cheese and peanut butter, drank powdered milk (GROSS!), bought generic food (when it was still in black and white labels), slaughtered animals on the farm for meat or my step dad bartered for a cow every once in a while. We had a fully stocked freezer at most times. My step-dad hunted and we ate all kinds of animals, including . . . on occasion pigeons and even a raccoon once! We had a cellar full of potatoes and carrots and apples and we canned everything . . . including pork. We made jelly and jam.  We got as much food from the land as we could to keep the grocery bills down.

I rode the bus to and from school. When I first moved to Portage, I played the . . . seriously . . . I played the tuba. (The only reason I played the tuba is because it was the only instrument left and there were three of us who were not in band in 6th grade. I don’t know what happened, I guess my mom never signed me up. Probably because we couldn’t afford an instrument. So, they needed tuba players and my friend Dianne and I decided to give it a try.) Well, that sucked taking that home on the bus and I got into too much trouble in the back of the room in band so I was given a choice of what instrument to play. I didn’t know it at the time, but the band instructor showed me two instruments, an oboe and a bassoon and asked me to choose. I took the smaller one. They didn’t make me pay for rental of the instrument, but the reeds cost quite a bit of money ($5, I think.) So, I learned to make my own reeds so it would be cheaper.

To make money, I babysat. I loved babysitting because I didn’t have to be at home and they had an awesome record collection! The three boys I babysat were relatively fun and we found lots of stuff to do to wear them out so they’d go to bed early! $1 per hour. I did it so I could buy clothes. Every year we got a coat, a pair of tennis shoes and one outfit. The rest I had to buy myself. Or, rummage out of boxes of free hand-me-down clothes that I got from my cousins and neighbors. Usually ugly clothes that I hated that were out of style.

My mom cut my hair when I was little. She was allegedly a trained beautician . . . but we did not agree on style! So, I cut my hair myself . . . and later my brother’s hair.

I got a huge sliver in my hand once. I couldn’t get it out. We never went to the doctor and it was starting to get infected and it was hard to move my wrist. The home economics teacher must have noticed it, I don’t even think I was in home ec at the time. Anyways, I was in trigonometry class one day and she came in to the room in the middle of class and didn’t say a word to me. She just taped some concoction on my wrist. And walked out of the room. I was, as any teenager would be, extremely embarrassed. I left it on my wrist all day and when I went home that night I took it off so my parents didn’t see it. The next morning, the sliver just popped out of my wrist. I later asked, I think it was bread and onion soaked in milk and boiled. Don’t know why it worked.  That was healthcare.

One year, I was so angry at my parents because I got a D in band. I got the D because I twirled flag with the drill team and I missed a football game. My parents hated driving me to town. I guess it cost money, right? So, one night after I was done with dinner and hurrying to get the dishes done, my stepdad got mad because I wasn’t doing a good enough job and he thought he’d teach me a lesson, army style! He took all the dishes out of all the cupboards and made me re-wash them and said I could only go to the game if I got them all done. I didn’t make it on time. I tried begging my band director, who was awesome, not to give me the D but he said he couldn’t apply different rules to different people and that it was his only choice. I got a D, and it lowered my grade point average. I was angry about that for a very long time. I’m sure I did a shitty job with the dishes . . . but they didn’t care if I got good grades. That one still hurts a little

When I was 16 I was old enough to work in Wisconsin Dells. I sometimes worked 16 hours a day, 14 days in a row. I didn’t get paid overtime even tho I worked for the same employer sometimes 60 – 80 hours a week. I folded t-shirts and sold souvenirs, sold cheese, took pictures on the cover of magazines, sold clocks that I installed on wooden pictures, made fudge, took old time photos and worked at Dairy Queen.

When I graduated, I moved out of the house. I was still only 17, but I moved to Wisconsin Dells. Paid $25 a week to live in a house with 17 . . . yes, seventeen . . . other women. Luckily, it was just for the summer.

I went to UW-Platteville. That is why I was working so hard in the summer in Wisconsin Dells. I had to make enough money to go to school. I never really realized how poor I was, the full extent of it, until I filled out my financial aid forms. My parents made $8000 that year for a family of 5. It was 1986.

I got some small scholarships, pell grants and had to pay for the rest myself. Every once in a while, maybe monthly, my mom would send me $25. It was greatly appreciated! Meanwhile, I lived in the dorms and got free room and board because I was an R.A. for three years. I also got paid by working at the dining hall, for being in Student Senate and working extra hours for the Housing Department. One summer, maybe two I stayed in Platteville and got a free place to stay by working the conferences that used the dorms in the summer, including getting the dorms ready for the Chicago Bears training camp.

Despite all that work, I never had enough money. And then . . . I got credit cards!!! Yeah. Serious FAIL! on my part, but I did what I needed to do to survive. And paid back $14K for many years. I no longer have credit cards.

I remember having a tooth ache and I went to the dentist, which I couldn’t afford. They could do a root canal for $600 or 700 I think (don’t exactly remember) or they could pull the tooth for like $125. Even that sounded expensive. I didn’t have the money, so I told the dentist to pull the tooth. I’ll never forget the pained look on his face and him trying to talk me out of it.

I also remember teaching my friend to drive stick shift in my car when I cut my finger and had to have stitches. My car was a disaster and probably shouldn’t have been driven on the road. (In fact, one car I drove the mechanics wouldn’t let me have back when I took it in. It was a Subaru I paid $75 for.) Anyways, we did that so that I wouldn’t have to call the ambulance.

One time when I was sick I went to health services and they told me I was probably just stressed and sent me home with some pepto bismol. I continued to be sick and I had a friend that was an EMT. She had me lay down on the bed and pushed on my stomach and left the room. That time, they called the ambulance. Turns out, after a day in the hospital they decided that my appendix had burst and it had to be taken out. I spent a week in the hospital. Luckily, for the first time ever, my mom was working a job that had health insurance that covered me.

I graduated from UW-Platteville in 1990 with a B.A. in Criminal Justice (I wanted to be a probation or parole officer) and a minor in English. I had my car and room all packed and was planning to go to Toledo Ohio to be a Resident Director and get a Masters in Public Administration when I got the notice that I had been accepted to UW-Madison Law School.

How I got in, I’ll never know. I didn’t take the LSAT prep classes like everyone else I know did. I just went to the library and practiced taking them over and over and over until I started getting decent scores. I’d take a test, check my answers and cry because I did so terribly. Then I’d go through each answer, answer after answer trying to figure out how they came up with their answers.

Anyways, off to law school! Now how the hell am I going to pay for that?! No scholarships or grants, but credit cards, lots of roommates living in shitty housing, some students loans and mostly, I worked, even when it was against the rules to do so. I worked 3rd shift at a halfway house for women. Studied at night and went to school in the day. I got fired from that job because on Easter my stepdad was fixing the breaks on my car and he didn’t get them done on time, so I was late for work. They fired me. I appealed, they reinstated me and I quit. 🙂

So, I graduated from law school, opened my own law office and practiced criminal defense, family and tenant/landlord law (general practice) for 2 years until I got the job at Tenant Resource Center because we fired two Executive Directors in a row. It was going to be a temporary job, for 3 months, then 3 years . . . it has been 16 years. My student loans are almost paid off. I own my home. I love Rob. I served on the City Council of MADISON! for 8 years! (I still can’t believe it) I’m actually driving a car that’s not embarrassing. I can afford the things I need and want. Life is good again.

But, I skipped a pretty important point. A few years after I was Executive Director of the Tenant Resource Center, I got a call at work. Someone was calling me to notify me that my father had died and I was the next of kin and I had to make decisions about what to do. You see, he died homeless. Cirrhosis of the liver. He was an alcoholic. He had a (I think) developmentally disabled girlfriend, and I had a half brother, who was two. My father was 55, I think. A very nice social worker from the homeless shelter in Minnesota explained all this to me. I told them to ask his brother many of the questions, after all, I hardly knew him. They wanted to know if my half brother could have the flag from the Veterans Administration. I of course, said yes. They explained to me that it was very important to my dad’s girlfriend, because the homeless shelter had thrown out all of my dad’s belongings a few weeks earlier. It was a mistake. But, he was really upset because it had his bible and the picture of me and my brother that was lost.

I hadn’t seen him since I was 17 and upset me on my graduation day. I got back from walking across the stage and he was sitting in my seat. I was furious. I’m sure I crushed him as he probably thought it was a great surprise, me being 17 was just embarrassed. He called me drunk every once in a while after that. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I’m sure I did it poorly, but I did the best I could. When I could understand him.

I won’t lie, I have some regrets about this last part. But I’m also at peace with it, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you.

So, that’s my experience with poverty and all kinds of ugly things. Like I said, I was angry and bitter and pissed off at many points in my life. It just didn’t seem fair. In the end, looking back with enough distance, I’m not sure I’d change much. It is what it is and it makes me who I am.  Sometimes it makes me emotional, and you can see that.  Other times I can still get really pissed off.  But mostly, I just work hard so others don’t have to have these kinds of experiences.

So you see, I do understand poverty. My experiences colors my view of the world, but I’m not obsessed with it. However, I can be very passionate about some of these issues. You don’t forget these kinds of experiences and having lived it, I don’t want others to have to live through these kinds of things if it can be avoided. And we have the means to make the world different if that is what we choose.  That is why poverty matters to me.  And I know, poverty sucks!

p.s. I’ve never been this open about my past. Mostly because I feel it is irrelevant. I only tell it now to maybe help some people understand what motivates me and why I am so passionate. I probably would not have told my story if it weren’t for some AMAZING people I have met through Operation Welcome Home, Take Back the Land Madison and Freedom Inc. The courage they show to tell their stories has motivated me to tell mine. They do it to help others understand, and I thank them for doing so and motivating me to tell my story. I’m sure many others have stories as well. Its just not something you bring up in casual conversation! Thanks for listening.