Excuse Me!

We are hearing a lot these days from a certain boisterous and routinely violent segment of our nation about how privileged a certain portion of us are.

These claims of privilege are based strictly on the color of one’s skin. Excuse me, but isn’t that being racist? I don’t know about you, but it sure would have been nice to have been born into a privileged family!

My parents were survivors of the Great Depression and both of their families were poor, and I mean poor, having little with which to survive on. One of the few pictures of my dad and his family shows them outside of a house that he and his dad, Orville, built using empty metal oil cans.

Every few days my dad, Calvin, and one of his younger brothers would go to the local garbage dump and gather all the empty oil cans they could find. When enough were found Orville would buy a bag of cement and construction began.

There was no foundation and for years the interior floors were bare dirt. After the cement was mixed and ready to use Orville and Calvin would lay up the oil cans as if they were bricks. Working most of a summer and into the early fall they managed to build a small one room home. The outside of the house was covered over with a layer of cement.

A salvaged window was installed in the front of the house. The next year they added another room that became his parents’ and younger sister’s bedroom. Working all summer and into the early fall they managed to finish the tin can house before winter set in.

The following spring my dad was put to work every day after school, weekends, and after the school year ended for weeks. Doing what? Climbing in and out of a hole in the ground as he helped dig a well by hand. In order to hit drinkable water, dad said that the well ended up being over 140 feet deep. Now that is really white privilege!

Then at age 17, before graduating high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After completing boot training he spent most of the rest of his enlistment on board the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Portland.

He and the Portland were at several of the battles at Guadalcanal, the Salomon’s and several other major and minor engagements. At age 20 he and Barbara fell in love and were married while he was stationed at a base outside Oklahoma City. I was born after the war was over and dad was out of the Navy.

Much of my youth was spent traveling up and down the highways and byways of the USA as my folks went from job to job in order to earn enough money to buy food and clothing. The longest we ever stayed anywhere was in Fairbanks, Alaska (2 to 4 years at a time!) from 1956 to 1968 when I entered the U.S. Navy.

We made 6 trips up and down the AlCan Highway as dad looked for better employment. I could not afford a college education and the Navy provided me with 4 years of advanced electronics and computer training, among other skills in the Talos missile field.

To make a long story short, it took mom and dad over 55 years of hard, long days to eventually make and save enough money to retire on. After I was medically discharged from the Navy, I joined my parents as we worked at newspapers in Indiana and other states, and we started one from scratch in Winnemucca, Nevada, called the Humboldt Sun. We routinely worked 60 to 80 hour or more, weeks. About a year or so after leaving the Navy I married Dorothy and we eventually raised 5 of our own kids and adopted a sixth. Like my parents before me, Dorothy and I worked our tails off to make enough money to sometimes make ends meet. At one point we went through bankruptcy, lost our home and business. For quite a while it was a struggle just to make enough money to buy food.

Now it is many years later. Dorothy and I successfully raised our kids to be able to make it on their own. Dorothy has health problems and I’m growing older and grayer by the day.

Dorothy’s declining health forced her to quit work about two years ago, and I finally retired earlier this year. It still isn’t easy and we watch expenses. But thanks to the good Lord, we were able to save some money and we should be OK until Jesus comes to take us home. To tell the whole story would require a rather large novel-size book.

Lord! If we had only had access to white privilege!