I’ve been watching just like anyone else and this is what’s likely going to happen. I was born on a farm. We were as poor as some of the dirt we planted in. We had a horse, mule, and a cow. My granddad plowed fields with the mule until he found a way to buy a small farm tractor. We got our milk/butter from the cow. We raised hogs and had hog killin’s where afterward the smokehouse would be full of meat and lard for cooking for a while. Venison may have been in there too. We had chickens for both eggs and chicken fried or with dumplings.

We had no running water. Just a shallow well with a handpump sitting on top with a quart jar of water next to it to prime it when we needed water. We had a “slop jar” in the house during the winter when it was too cold to run outside to the outhouse. Our house wasn’t built already wired for electricity. That came after the Co-op came along putting in power lines. The drop lines to our house resembled more of an extension cord.

We heated the house with a pot-bellied stove. A/C? Nope. No such thing. Perhaps an oscillating fan that mom and dad got at night. We sweat it out in our beds. Or in the winter it was two or three handmade quilts from my Aunt Lottie’s quilting bees. She was the only one in the neighborhood with a room big enough for a quilting frame.

We ate vegetables and such, like potatoes, collards, peas or beans during the week. Meat was a Sunday thing. During the summer I went barefooted. Shoes were for cold weather or goin’ ta town and Sunday church. We had one car and between my dad and his dad we had a pickup to haul farm stuff.

And you know. . . I was happy. I didn’t know better and still, I was fine with it. A big reset in our economy is more likely than not to put us right back to those “good ole days”. I can live with it because I have lived with it. It’s gonna hurt these last couple of generations, though, I’m quite sure.