We did not make a fortune -- the one promised by my boss, who supervised me as I sold encyclopedias door-to-door. I started out like a flash, selling enough to pay for one month's rent for a small apartment next to bakery in Lakeland, Florida, and to stock the fridge and cabinets with groceries. However, a month later, after my sales ran dry, we thought we were going to starve to death. We were down to our last five dollars at the end of the adventure, the rent was due and we had two packages of mac and cheese in the cupboard. I remember buying a gallon of milk, knowing that my wife needed the calcium, and I lay awake that night, praying for a sale the next day. The sale did not come. We decided to sell our car, a 1952 Plymouth, to get enough money to eat, pay for a week's overdue rent and purchase train tickets back to Indiana where we had family.
The morning I was going to buy enough gasoline to get the car to a car lot to sell it, I stepped out onto the porch at sunrise and wept over feeling so helpless. I smelled bread baking at the bakery and took a few steps in that direction, peaking through the open back door and plotting to steal a loaf of bread to feed our growling stomachs. In the end I decided against it, not so much because of my morals but more because I thought if I got caught it would only complicate our situation. I will never forget that moment because I had justified the theft in my mind. I have thought about that often since, understanding on some level why poor people sometimes steal or con people. I vowed to get back on my feet and to never again allow myself or my family to get one paycheck away from hunger and poverty.
As it turned out, I had sold the car for way less than its value. I then gladly walked the three miles back to our flat, took my wife out for a lunch of spaghetti, garlic bread and milk at a nearby diner, and offered our landlady the overdue rent. She refused and gave us homemade chocolate chip cookies instead. We bought one-way train tickets back to Indiana and arrived there with three dollars between us. Thanks to relatives and friends, we made our way back to a job and a normal life.
Today, when I hear some politicians talk about welfare mothers and poor people as if they are a cancer on society, I want to shout at them that they don't know what they're talking about. Poverty is not just a physical state, it is a demoralizing, psychological weight that can crush the spirit out of the most resilient person. World peace might be the most honored wish for humanity. But let's start by ending poverty. The two issues are inseparably shackled together like prisoners in a gulag.
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