The Rural Poor Always Manage - Somehow

A few years ago I heard a news interview with a lady from Alabama who had taken a job in Washington, D.C.  She secured lodging outside the city and talked about the poverty she saw as she drove in each morning.  One comment she made really stuck with me, and came to mind as I’ve been preparing my next book.  I can’t exactly quote her (and don’t remember her name to site that quotation anyway) but she said ‘out in the country, poor people always find a way to survive’.

On the mountain, we often consider ourselves poor people – so maybe that’s why I identified with her comment.  Yet, the more I learn about the generations who came before me, the more I realize the abundance they enjoyed.  Of course when you discuss wealth, you have to determine which ruler to use.  A scammer called me once and after I shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him, he told me “I thought it would be okay to scam rich Americans.”  I would normally say I’m anything but rich, but I realize if my home, car, wardrobe and dinner menu were compared to the poor in Niger, Sierra Leone, or India (where that gentleman said he lived), they might just think I live like the queen of a small country.  And this is 2020.

In 1935 a cellar stocked with a good crop of potatoes, dried beans hanging from the rafters and a hog quickly fattening on fall’s acorns would’ve made most of the world envious. 

Don’t you wonder though, what did prosperity look like in 1900 or before?

In 1900 John D. Rockefeller, known as the wealthiest American of all time, would have been 61 years old and his Standard Oil Company was still intact.  The Biltmore House was just 5 years old and the industrial revolution was, well, revolutionizing America.  On Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, the Tennessee Central Railroad connected the Plateau to Nashville and the wide world with a line that reached to Emory Gap. 

While the railroad allowed stock and crops to be sold beyond the plateau, families here were still largely subsistence farmers.   Somehow, that term has become almost derogatory, as though survival is not enough.  In that day before you could compare whether your car was newer or faster than your neighbors, when no one had the latest iteration of cell phone or other technological gadget, wasn’t it enough to have good food on the table and healthy children?

And all of that abundance takes us right back to the land.  I think the land and the culture of those who’ve grown up close to the land is probably that ‘managing’ part of the rural poor. 

In years past, if a man could manage to get a little spot of land, he could begin building something – not just a home, but building a family and a life.  He would cut timber, work in the mines or hire himself out as farm labor until he could save enough cash money to buy a milk cow and maybe a mule to pull a plow.  He would put out a crop to feed both family and stock – and his whole family would help him. 

Sure there were cold times – homes weren’t insulated and heavy woolen coats were often a luxury.  Yet, if he worked hard cutting wood, his wife could sit close to the fireplace with the baby and they’d be okay. 

And there were hungry times as well, when crops didn’t fare well and the forest didn’t give up the game.  Yet, with a little grace (and a garden must be planted with prayer), and a lot of hard work, the land would give just about everything that family needed.  Clothing spun from cotton or wool, meat and vegetables to eat, could all be had with just a tiny amount of knowledge and a little spot of land.

It’s really no wonder that the home-place was revered.