Nobody Can Do it Alone
Do not ask the question “how are you” of anyone in the working poor if you aren’t ready for a long story. And “Hillbilly Elegy” isn’t it, because that book has a happy ending.
Which is exceedingly rare. For most of the poor, life just goes on, and on, and on, a day by day struggle until you die from just wearing out. No joy, no hope, no health, no happiness.
On Friday afternoon, I got a call from my son, who started out twenty five years ago as my foster child, and is now an adult with two children going through a divorce he didn’t want. Like most men whose wives throw them out of the marriage, he went into a terrible depression, and only the great resilience he developed during his troubled childhood keeps him going.
I should tell you here that he was convicted of a (non-violent) felony as a teenager(he was 19 when he went in and 23 when he got out), and even though he did his time (drugs) and has been exemplary ever since, including becoming the first person in his family ever to get a college degree, he is only making $13 an hour because of the way our society treats former felons even after 12 years of being out of prison.
He and his wife collected a great deal of debt during the marriage trying to give their kids a good life. And of course that debt was from Rent-to-Own furniture places, car title loans, and other lenders who rip the poor.
Dissolving the marriage created extra expenses: baby sitters, second apartments, and food, clothing, and furniture in two places. For three months my son struggled with his debt, and finally I convinced him to file for bankruptcy and get a clean start.
So he filed.
That’s when I got the call. When I asked “how are you” he just laughed. “Pretty good for a guy with no job, no car, and no home,” he said. “And I can’t pick up the kids this weekend.”
He then explained that although he had filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, the lender repossessed his car on Friday. Without a car, no job. Without a job, no rent money.
Now you may not know this, but it is illegal to repossess the car of a person who has filed for bankruptcy. When my son called them, the lenders realized their mistake, but the lot was closed until Tuesday. He goes to work on Monday.
To rent a car, you need a drivers’ license and a credit card. Both were in the car that was repossessed.
Fortunately, I was home from Christmas in Montreal, and free to pick him up and help him rent a car, which took four and a half hours because it was a holiday weekend. The car cost me extra money to rent because he couldn’t present his credit card (luckily he has a duplicate driver’s license). And we don’t know how long he will need it, because I’m sure no one is in a hurry to help him get his car back.
I put him on the road in his rental car, and went home to attack the problem of my foster daughter, who has three children and is a single mom. She had to go to court this month because of a custody argument with the father of her oldest child, and the court costs meant she doesn’t have enough money to pay her rent this month.
She works. She gets up at 3 AM to go to work. She makes $12 an hour.
I cannot let her get evicted.
At this point, I need some help myself. I cannot refuse to help these kids, because I know how hard they work and how hard they are trying to be the parents they never had. They and their children deserve a break. And yet I don’t have the disposable income I used to have, either.
Families are broken this way.
It’s not income inequality that is the real problem in the US right now; it is the unwillingness of the “haves” to become involved in a real way with the “have nots.” In fact, just referring to them as “have nots” is a way of denying our common humanity.
To most of the rest of you, people like my foster kids — your store clerk, your tile laborer, your barista, are invisible. To me, they’re a crushing weight on my heart.
Link to the GoFundMe I started.https://www.gofundme.com/2gq9449u
