I GREW UP IN HARD TIMES

What The Heck Happened To Responsibility and Common Sense

By Dannie McIntire

CITY-COUNTY OBSERVER FEATURE WRITER

My writing today may upset some readers while other readers may agree with me. I was born in 1950, and I grew up in what I consider the “Best of times”. My parents were born in a “hollow” called Big Branch in Viper Kentucky. Dad enlisted during World War II and married mom while serving in the army. After the war, back in Viper to make a living your future was most likely working in a coal mine, so my dad and mom moved to Louisville to “seek a different future”. After a few years of rental living, dad and mom purchased a piece of then rural property In Shively, Kentucky and built the house I was to grow up in. Dad and mom grew up in Viper on adjoining farms, both came from large families, and themselves raised five children in that small 3 bedroom one bathroom house on Briargate Ave.  

As I said it was more or less “rural property” at the time, their house, one of the first to be built on Briargate, was located at the end of a dead end street, and to the west of our house existed what us kids referred to as the “woods”. Probably no more than a dozen acres of treed woodland and a large creek, but in my early years, it seemed a vast forest where my siblings and neighborhood friends spent countless hours. Forts to be built, both above and underground, trees to be climbed, countless hours of find and seek, frozen catchers, cowboys and Indians, combat in the woods with makeshift weapons, there was never a lack of something to do. 

As the neighborhood built up, being part of the “gang”, on weekends we would leave our houses in the morning and more often as not played outside until called for lunch, back out again until supper, and then often out again until dark. Our parents didn’t have to worry about where we were, it was a simpler time, the dangers we faced were twisted ankles, falling out of a tree, wrecking you bike, skinned knees from roller skating, a swelling knot from a dirt clog fight. We had no distractions like video games, the outside world was our video game. If more sinister dangers existed, as they seem to today, it wasn’t a prevalent danger our parents worried about as we were gone from home for hours.  

I was raised having to do “chores”, as most kids were back then, I can’t recall the word “entitlement” ever being spoken in our house. As a child, if you wanted to buy something special for yourself, it meant doing extra chores to earn the money. In the summer “the woods” offered an abundance of blackberries to be picked and sold to the neighborhood moms, inevitably requiring the home remedy mixture of bacon grease and salt being applied to the dreaded chiggers. I spent many hours walking the creek in the summer when it was mostly dry, turning over rocks looking for earth worms and crawdads which I sold as bait to dad and his fishing buddies. Along with my brother, we spent many a day scouring the creek and roadsides in the area looking for pop bottles to cash in at three cents apiece. If you wanted spending money it was your “responsibility” to earn it.

I started working part time after school when I was 13, cleaning campers for Charlie’s Travel Trailers. Earning an astounding 75 cents an hour, I’d bike from home to Dixie Highway after school and on weekends. I learned the value of money, it wasn’t handed to me, I worked for it. 

When I married and began raising my own family, by age 24 I had three children, we never lived beyond our means, but my children never lacked for anything they truly needed. When we bought our first house, we had saved for the down payment, no help from either set of parents. We didn’t ask for monetary help, we didn’t expect monetary help, it was our responsibility. My first house cost $18,750, and I worried how the heck I was going to make the mortgage payments. I worked both a main and part time job for a number of years, until our three kids were in school and my wife began working outside the home. I say it that way, because believe me, saying home with three kids was work! Looking back, at those early years, we were responsible in our decision making, we used common sense, unless a major purchase was an absolute necessity, we never bought on credit, we saved until we could pay cash.          

I believe our society as a whole has been failing to instill the value and importance of “individual responsibility” and “common sense” among too many in the last few generations. Today, there seems to be an almost endless array of federal and state government entitlement programs that either enables irresponsible behavior or negates the consequences for failing to use common sense.

Oh, you made a bad decision and overpaid on the house you purchased, and now you’re behind on your mortgage payments, don’t worry, it’s certainly not your fault. The federal government has an entitlement program that will loan you the amount you are in arrears to pay your mortgage company, and you don’t have to pay it back until you sell your house, charging you zero percent interest for using my tax dollars. 

You’re unemployed but you can’t seem to find to find a job that “fits you”. Come on, just check the “help wanted” section, there are an abundance of job offers. They may not be the CEO position you think you deserve, but assume the “responsibly” to support yourself or family, find employment and work while you continue to look for a better opportunity. Oh wait, I forgot it’s not your fault that you’re unwilling to work at a job that is below what you think you deserve, after all, the government will support you while you sit at home and ”find yourself”. Now there are an abundance of federal and state entitlement programs including rent abatement, rent assistance, guaranteed income projects, utility assistance programs, free government cell phone program, food assistance, so take your time and live off my tax dollars until you “find yourself”. 

Perhaps I’ve been more blessed in life, I can honestly say from the time I graduated high school until I retired, I’ve never been unemployed, and yes I worked less than stellar 2nd jobs, frying fish at Long John Silver’s, pumping gas on 2^nd and 3^rd shits, but again, I had the ”responsibility” to support my family. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against helping out people. Some people do find themselves in dire circumstances through no fault of their own, and I have no problem with the government using my tax dollars to temporally support them.  The problem is, many of these programs end up making it far too easy for the recipient to become dependent on government assistance. Often there is little or no incentive for the person to assume “responsibility” in trying to improve their situation themselves, and it can often lead to generational dependence on government assistance.            

Now here is where I may ruffle more reader’s feathers, let’s talk student loan debt. What? You’re surprised that a student loan is required to be paid back. It is a loan, you knew it was a loan, and loans have to be paid back. I will say, that you “have to have a college education” has been oversold. Look through the employment ads at the number of technical jobs remaining unfilled. Technical jobs that often pay more than a person with a four year degree will make even after several years in the work force. We as a society have invested too much worth in a four year college degree and not enough in vocational schooling. 

So now, you find yourself with a four year college degree in a liberal arts “basket weaving” degree which out in the workforce has little value, so you find yourself underemployed and unable to repay your student loan(s). Now you are indigent. It’s not fair, I shouldn’t have to repay it, it’s not my fault I borrowed so much money. DUH….it is called “responsibility” and “Common Sense”. It is not my responsibility as a taxpayer if either your parents failed to teach you or they tried and you failed to learn those two qualities. If you learn one thing in life, it should be that life is not always fair, but it’s a heck of a lot fairer if you learn for yourself “responsibility” and “Common Sense”. When you take out a loan, you’ve borrowed someone else’s money, you pay it back!  

Now I will say, growing up in the “best of times”, it was possible as I did, to secure a well paying blue collar job without going to college, in fact I ended up working for the same company for almost 48 years, a rarity in today’s times. I retired at age 66, now almost 72, I can say I worked most of my life for what I now have.

Wait, now reading back what I’ve written, maybe I didn’t grow up in the “best of times”, after all, back then I had to work for everything I have! 

FOOTNOTE: The City-Coonty Observer posted this article without bias or editing.