Here is a story my dad told me once:

When I was your age (about 9), I worked for a living, I laid telephone poles in the ground, I worked 14 hours a day, I had to hold the pole up with one hand while I ate lunch, know how much I made, 25 cts a week. I lived 25 miles from school, I walked everyday, uphill both ways, through the snow, barefoot. I didn’t have a belt to hold up my trousers, I used an old light cord, I had to get up before the sun, I fed the chickens, milked the cows, slopped the hogs and plowed the lower 47 acres, after that I had breakfast and, not that fancy stuff you have, I had bacon grease and a biscuit. We churned our own butter and homogenized our own milk.

I’d asked my dad for a quarter. After that story, I told him he got screwed, he didn’t punish me, cause he knew that story was too much. We still laugh about it to this day.

E.J. Batchan
6/22/1922 – 12/6/2003
I MISS YOU DAD