During my undergraduate college days (1978) I was married with a small baby. We lived in the mountains above Chico in a small two room cabin with , a small Ben Franklin Stove for heat and a water supply from a spring which I had to clean out and refurbish before we could begin to use it. This was a little one bar cowboy town and the community regularly ran out of water during the hot summers. I received about $400 a month from the GI bill and I had to provide food, rent, gas and all school costs from this money. During the summers I worked as a Gypo lumberjack, cutting trees on public land, loading it on my buddies truck and hauling it about 60 miles to a mill. Sometimes I would haul water from Chico to the residents for a fee and I was never embarrassed to take any manual labor I could find.
At the time, I thought life was rough, horribly constraining, and unfair because I could see rich kids from San Francisco and LA with parents who paid for everything they needed, including the latest styles and extra party money. But now looking back on it, those days of struggle were what built my grit, my closeness with my son, and my understanding of what had value and what doesn't. So to answer what would I have done different, I would say that instead of those days I spent wasting time thinking life was rough, I would have reveled in it. I would change my attitude and realize that everything I was going through was toughening me up, making me ready to face the real world.
I would have smiled more and frowned less and enjoyed the little pleasures regardless of how much money I had.
Friday, March 9, 2007
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