Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash

I once wrote a human interest article for a newspaper about a woman with three children living in a tent with cardboard boxes for a floor. They had been living in the tent in the woods for months, and she was dreading the oncoming winter. She had a job but couldn’t afford housing.

My photographer and I had to hitch a ride in a brush buggy built to go through wetland woods to get to her. She and her sons walked to the tent because she had no car, and she had pitched it as far back from the road as she could in hopes no one would see them and make them leave the property.

This wasn’t in some third-world country. It was in the US south and not far from a bustling town. It was fall, and she was dreading the cold winter coming and the hoard of hunters who would soon descend on any unmarked land.

I can’t remember the whole story because it was 30 years ago. Still, after the story was published, she got several offers for better places to live and other help, too. Her life changed because I got a tip and did a story. But it didn’t help the others in the same or worse situations.

There are so many others.

I wondered today why I’ve never written about a particular couple I know who are also prime examples of the struggling poor. It is a fallacy that hard work will always keep one out of the poorhouse.

I hate winter. It’s hard to sleep at night knowing so many people have no warmth, no cozy comforter, and no reliable heat in their homes — if they even have homes. Things will only get worse for them as winter comes — as it does for so many people.

They call him Bird.

Back to the couple I was talking about. They live in the Ozark Mountain foothills. The husband has the nickname “Bird” because he climbs and cuts down trees for a living and is at home high in a tree. He has a reputation as one of the best. But he has to work for himself because he has a felony on his record from a drug charge 20 years ago. That keeps a lot of companies from hiring him. Even though he has friends in the industry who would love to have him working for them, the big lumber companies, power companies, etc., have rules against hiring ex-cons, so he works for himself. The hard way.

Still, if he had access to financial help — even to a loan — he could and would make it.

His age is catching up with him. He is 49 and wearing out from the strenuous job of climbing and cutting trees his whole adult life.
He manages anyway without the proper equipment (he has to rent it) or even a big enough truck. He gets by. Barely. He works harder and in more danger than I can stand to watch.

He has almost magical skills in taking down big trees in small spaces. The guy is talented at what he does. I’ve seen a video of him taking down a tree between a house and a shed — where there was probably not 15 feet to work — and never hitting the house or the shed with limbs of any size. He climbs the trees with amazing skill, many ropes, and good gear. With a couple of helpers, he takes that tree down limb by limb, piece by piece. He specializes in taking down trees others are afraid to try due to their proximity to structures.

He has insurance, of course, which he has a hard time paying for, but obviously, must have for what he does, and it is expensive.

The guy is all banged up from an accident that almost killed him when he worked for a power company. Up in a tree in a bucket, clearing right-of-way, Bird was hit when a limb swung back toward him rather than away. The ground crew hurriedly brought the bucket down with him inside and unconscious. The limb probably weighed over 1000 pounds, swung hard toward him, and Bird was seriously injured. The scars are hideous, and there was internal tissue damage, too. But he works. And how he works.
There was simply not enough pressure on the limb to cause it to swing away from the cutter. The mistake was made on the ground with the roping. The chain saw didn’t get to him because it was roped to the bucket, and when he was knocked out it fell outside. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be here today.
He spent a while in a hospital after that one but has many other, less severe scars. It is dangerous work.
And he is getting too old to do it. He still climbs, but mostly he tries to handle the situation from the ground while giving instructions to the woodcutter up in the tree. When his wife knows he doesn’t have enough help and will have to climb, she is a wreck all day and can’t bear to watch him. He keeps telling her he knows what he is doing, and she knows he does. But they both know accidents happen.

His wife has Lupus and can sometimes work but sometimes cannot.

They have two mentally challenged children.

She makes jewelry when she can — elaborate and beautiful beaded creations. In addition to Lupus, she is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, which can also flare and land her in bed if not in the hospital. She now homeschools her younger son because he has a mental illness that causes him not to do well in a classroom.

Their older son is high-functioning autistic, and although he does well in school, he has not yet graduated.

So Bird works and works hard. His wife, when she can, works, too, carrying logs to the truck (much too small for the job) and picking up debris from trees that have been cut. She worked even during the hot, hot summer we had this year. But often, after a period of her working and being healthy, the Lupus flares up.

The boys work, too. Bird has taught them to split wood on a machine, which they do in winter so they can sell firewood. He works them pretty hard when the oldest is out of school, but not as much during school time for the older boy. The younger son sometimes works well, and sometimes not. He is challenging to handle. Among several other diagnoses, he has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which can be tough to deal with, as any psychologist can tell you.

The way they live.

Let me tell you about their home life. They live in a 3 bedroom mobile home in a huge mobile home park where many of the trailers are owned by the landowner and in poor shape. The landlord doesn’t fix anything and probably knows not many people living there can afford to move. He also allows late rent payments — another reason the working poor living there can’t move. They can never get enough money ahead to move.

The air conditioner in the mobile home was broken down so much last summer that they bought and put small window air conditioners in the windows where they could.

The floor is rotting. The boys have a board nailed across one place in their bathroom because there is no floor. There’s a very soft spot in their dining room that they also keep covered. Again, the landlord won’t fix anything. And that’s true for most of their neighbors, too.

People move into relatively nice trailers. Then, as the years go by, the trailers deteriorate because there is no maintenance by anyone unless the renters do it.

And as is often the case, everything is harder for the poor. They can’t get money ahead enough to move, and the landlords know it. They just allow the property to get worse and worse. A window gets broken by a lawnmower throwing a rock. It stays that way until finally, the tenants put wood or cardboard over the broken window and give up on it being fixed. A trailer develops a leak in the roof. The tenants have to deal with it. Nothing is ever fixed because the slumlord can’t make money fixing things.

So, Bird and his family do the best they can. Their trailer is nicely decorated and clean. But they allow another person, a longtime friend who works for their business and suffers the ups and downs of income with them, to live with them. He gets paid sporadically depending on whether they have work that week and functions more like a partner than an employee. So there are five adult-sized people living in the home. Not too crowded, but it is a single-wide mobile home.

If they only had a tractor…

There is no doubt in my mind that if these two men had a tractor and a real truck, they would do well for themselves. But sometimes, they can barely pay the trailer rent. There’s no way anyone will sell the needed equipment to them with their growing but only sporadically profiting business. Bird often says if he “just had a tractor,” he could make the money to pay for it.

They probably won’t make it although they’ve held on for a year with all the family helping. Bird will end up trying to find another job. But it is like this for so many of the poor. It wouldn’t take much of a hand-up to help them help themselves, but the amount seems impossible to the worn-down poor. They have dreams like the rest of us. But not even the usual sources of help on which to depend.

They do not get any government help with food, etc. They make too much, according to the Department of Human Services people, who go by their gross income.

Bird is a good mechanic and could fix anything wrong with used equipment. But even used, the equipment is way out of reach for them. If I had the money to spare, I would buy them a tractor, a lift, AND a big truck. I bet they would make a go of it.

No telling how many poor people in this country could work and even create jobs if they had some help. But few of them would have the credit to start even the smallest business. I know the Small Business Administration was supposed to help with that, but for various reasons there are many who are not being helped by it.

They are not unusual.

The thing is, Bird and his family are not unusual. Many good, hard-working people would be independent if anyone helped them instead of not even giving people like Bird a job.

Yes, some reasons for how they live are of their own making. They didn’t get poor and needy by always making the best decisions. There are always reasons and things poor people do that are not in their own best interests.

Some people are so judgmental.

People who are stingy-hearted and never help anyone always have ready excuses. I once ran a Christmas charity project, and the police were helping to distribute food baskets, presents for children, etc., that had been given for the project. One cop came back with his trunkload of goodies still in his car.

What happened”? I asked him.

“I think you should know,” he said, “that the wife smokes.”

“Well, for god’s sake, let’s not give those kids of hers any presents or food,” I said. He looked at me, irritated, and said he guessed I wanted the food and gifts taken there anyway.

“Yeah,” I told him as I headed outside to take a break as I still smoked then and wanted one myself. “Go ahead and take her their Christmas goodies.

For the project, we simply gave. There were no special qualifications. We gave to everyone who said they needed help. God, the Universe, Karma, or whatever higher power you believe in, will sort out the rest.

Those of us who are not poor and never have been have no idea. We just can’t imagine. We really can’t. It’s impossible to fathom the lives of people without money unless one has been there.

Some doomsayers say we’ll all be living hand-to-mouth soon. If that happens, then and only then will we know how our poor feel now. It behooves us to be kind and thankful for our good fortune.

And share. Always share.