As I steadily approach the lower middle class, it is the simple quirkiness of being dirt poor that I remember most fondly. Being poor is not necessarily a bad thing, it just makes you richer in other ways, kinda like how blind people have a stronger sense of smell.
For instance, poor people are way funnier than rich people. Rich people don't have to be funny, they get their high from being rich and never develop their sense's of humor. Rich people are mostly not funny because you have to suffer to be really funny. Who would you rather listen to, Richard Pryor or Chevy Chase? I rest my case.
When I lived at 34 East McMillan, in my third floor walk up, across the hall from a very young Cindy Robinson, I paid 175 dollars a month for rent. Once that was paid, the money would run out and we became very clever at amusing ourselves.
One particularly humid and disgusting summer, we decided we would create our own country (city) club on the roof of the house. There was a hatch on Cindy's kitchen ceiling that opened out to it. We would set up our ladder, hike up a plastic baby pool, a radio blaster, glasses of ice tea, lawn chairs and then, finally, hand up buckets of water to fill the baby pool.
Unfortunately, that was the summer of the 17 year cicada, and they were everywhere. They were like Japanese suicide bombers. They were some belligerent mother fuckers in their crunchy hard armor. Looking back on it, I'm impressed by how unfazed we were by them, it was just another thing to accept. You know, acceptance is the key to life.
As we sat in our lawn chairs, on that sweltering blacktop roof, listening to loud music that was considered the "oldies" even back then, dodging cicadas the size of mice in every direction, smoking, and drinking sweet ice tea, we named our oasis "Club Robinson".
We thought we were the luckiest people on the planet. That was one of the most amazing summers of my life, up there on Club Robinson, laying out, trying to turn ourselves into leather hand bags.
We loved our house, we loved our private club, we loved our lives, and we all loved each other. All that with no money, go figure. Often I think of those times, and wish I could go back. So simple and satisfying, so easy.
