I Wouldn’t Want to Be Poor Again, But . . .

I wouldn’t want to be poor again, but I do have a cherished memory from our newlywed, penny-pinching days. Some folks thought we married too young, especially since neither of us had jobs. Even worse, times were tough in the Rust Belt city where we lived, so prospects for work were slim.

Home to more General Motors workers than any other city in the world, Flint had already been suffering because of foreign competition, collective bargaining, and declining profit margins. Then the 1973 oil embargo and the accompanying stock market crash pushed Flint into economic crisis.

When we moved into our tiny honeymoon home on Hartman Street in 1975, recovery was barely in sight. One day Steve’s friend told him the good news of a job opening: pumping gas at Texaco. Steve headed straight there. But at the gas station, some eighty laid-off auto shop workers already waited in line.

We found small jobs—extracting honey and cleaning a laundry mat. But our living was slim. We ate what was cheap—beans and cornbread and rice and potatoes. Still, we often lived on the verge of hunger.

So when we found a baby was on the way, our emotions seesawed, feeling one moment delight for a child and the next terror because we had no health insurance.

Likely not knowing any of this, my uncle gave us the perfect Christmas gift that first year of our marriage.

“Take this to remember me,” he said at the end of a family gathering. “It’s from the deer I shot on Thanksgiving Day.”

That evening when Steve placed the venison in our refrigerator, he turned to me with resolve.

“That venison,” he said, “is for you and the baby. I won’t eat a bite of it.”

And he didn’t.

I portioned out the venison to make it last. The daily eating of it became my private ceremony—a celebration of my uncle’s generosity and of Steve’s goodness.

Almost fifty years have passed since I took the last bite of my uncle’s venison. But sometimes on a Sunday evening when the fire crackles in the hearth and Steve and I sit in our recliners like old, retired people, I look over at him and think about the venison.

And each time, it’s as if he’s kind to me all over again.