I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little
sister Ocy 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We
lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do
without many things.
My dad had died 5 years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946 my older sisters were married,
and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter
offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and
give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds
of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of
our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric
lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save
money on that month's electric bill.
Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us
baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops
to make three pot holders to sell for $1. We make $20 on pot holders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to
see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the
poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We
had about 80 people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we
had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every
Sunday the Pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the
grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10
bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We
had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could
hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we
had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church
was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got.
Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart,
and her feet got wet. But we sat in church proudly.
I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old
dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich. When the
sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the
front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked
home after church, we sang all the way.
At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had
boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister
drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and
then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she
didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There
were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1.
Mom put the money back in the envelope.
We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like
millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had had such a happy
life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our mom and dad for parents
and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We
thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the
spoon that night. We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed
them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd
never thought we were poor.
That Easter Day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for
the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my
dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed that I didn't want to go back to
church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!.
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of
over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I
decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all
the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time.
Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school
and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what
we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't
know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday,
but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.
Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that
day on I've never been poor again.
~ by Eddie Ogan ~