Reminiscences of Hard Times to Come

Discussion in 'Economics' started by Albert Cibiades, Dec 2, 2008.

  1. The Kondratieff wave exists because typically no one alive remembers the last one. I remember only through stories and lingering aftereffects. I'll share. You can, too.

    I remember how proud my mother was to serve us a Sunday dinner of a whole Spam lovingly glazed with Karo syrup, spiked with a few pitiful cloves and baked as if it were a luscious ham. We ate it with mustard and salt-rising biscuits.
     
  2. perhaps they are invading your home to eat you? Better have some good weapons and lots of ammo

     
  3. Winter is here, but Spring will come..............it always does.
     

  4. No pineapple circles and maraschino cherries? I can remember seeing my grandfather eat leftover corn bread with milk. He also would eat white bread with milk.
     
  5. Neodude

    Neodude

    This didn't happen in the US, but I remember:

    1. Getting a grapefruit for Christmas and being happy.
    2. My mother cooking kidneys (Imagine the house smelling like piss all day)
    3. Using pork fat as a bread spread (with nothing else on it).

    America doesn't think life can get this bad, but it did in many parts of Europe in the 70s and 80s.

    -Neo
     
  6. In our lifetimes ?
     
  7. Neodude

    Neodude

    Unfortunately not the pork. You had to stand in line for 3-4 hours with a ration coupon that said how much you can buy, assuming there was any left by the time you reached the butcher's counter.

    -Neo
     
  8. I remember travelling with my father on his petty business and staying in cheap clapboarded inns in the winter. The proprietor provided each of us one threadbare blanket for warmth in the unheated room. My father taught me to use newspaper between the sheet and blanket for better insulation. This was when the primary electrical insulator was paper, haha!
     
  9. TGregg

    TGregg

    Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

    Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

    Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

    Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.

    Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

    MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

    GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

    EI: Without milk or sugar.

    TG: OR tea!

    MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

    EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

    GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

    TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

    MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

    EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

    GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

    TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!

    MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

    EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

    GC: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

    TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

    MP: Cardboard box?

    TG: Aye.

    MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

    GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

    TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

    EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

    MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

    ALL: Nope, nope..
     
  10. You can also kiss infrastructure services goodbye. When I was a kid they didn't plow roads when it snowed. If you had to travel any distance, you had to take the train. Back then, of course, when you used the train crapper it went straight onto the tracks. I live in a state that balances its budget, so I have no sympathy for California. Let them go back to crapping on the tracks.
     
    #10     Dec 2, 2008