Oh, yeah. It was great. Once they sold the house and uprooted the kids from family, friends and school, it was a piece of cake. Get on a plane, fly somewhere that would pay for valuable job skills...
Oh, wait. Not all that easy for these folks, was it? Long, hard treks into lands where they weren't sure they'd even be able to survive, losing people for all sorts of reasons, suffering who knows what kinds of predations, illnesses...
I have relocated 10 times in my lifetime. Education, better job, travel. Four times with a family of 4, wife and two kids. Once went to China with the family to teach English. Both my wife and I taught English at a private school with our kids enrolled in Chinese elementary school.
We even had a mortgage on a house during the latter moves. Just rent the house, I did that, the rent pays off the mortgage.
Jesus Christ. How long ago was this? Before the housing market crashed, and most people are like my sister, who can't sell her house? Before everybody and his brother was out of work and desperate for anything, any kind of job?
Of course, you had viable job skills. Yay for you. We aren't all that fortunate. Maybe we should have known better.
Have a garage sale, then call the Salvation Army to pick up the left overs.
So, give up everything you've worked to hold on to, and buy it again someplace else, with money you don't have.
If you are single and have a car it is even easier.
Yeah, because what we need is to increase the homeless population.
Go on Craig's list and look for a room to rent in the new location.
Moving in with possible rapists, thieves and serial killers is exciting!
Find new job, any job, then get looking for ideal job.
Well, fuck me, but if I could just get a job that easily, I'd have one here.
Once you get that job, save up money, rent apartment.
Oooohhhh! Back to the living in the car idea. That looks great on the rental agreement, by the way. Not.
If undocumented can come over here, desert trek, no English, with the clothes on their back, and they can make it. Why not an American, who can drive a car, and speaks English not be able to do it?
Well, at least you wised up and changed that racist shit you had in there. People pack up and move all the time. It's not like you've come across some miracle solution that will solve all the economic problems in the world. Comparing today's situation with that of our African ancestors, or the early settlers of this country is ridiculous. Things are not the same at all. For every job out there, there are many people applying.
I'm going to tell my story now. My entire childhood was spent moving. We regularly packed up everything we had -- and it wasn't much, as we were terribly poor -- and moved from city to city so my father could either work, look for work, or find a house we could afford. We lived in falling-down places most people wouldn't put a dog in. We were cold in the winter and boiled in the summer.
We were always the new kids, the poor kids, the kids who were behind everybody else. For a period of about seven years, I started at one school and finished at another. There was even a year or two when I attended three schools.
To blithely suggest uprooting children from everything they know, their relatives, their friends, the school they attend, is so callous I can't even find the words (well, actually, I can, but they'd get me banned here).
I hated moving all the time. It's very stressful, and especially for children. We often never knew where we would be moving until a few days before we got there. My father had trouble finding people willing to rent to someone with six children, so there were times when we ended up crammed into a relative's house. The resentment this causes is also stressful.
When I went into the USAF, I went first to Texas, then Colorado, then Florida, withing three months. I nearly lost my mind, and that was just me with the few possessions I had. I got married and moved to Arizona. My oldest boys were born there, but shortly after the second one came along, I was out of the service and moving our household to Texas. Alone, because my husband was already there.
So, I ended up in another house that was barely holding together, in a small town with few resources and two kids. I was alone every day, all day long, often for several days while my husband worked. No family. No friends. No money.
Then my husband basically forced me to come back home, so I could use my GI bill and go to school (I would have had to drive to Austin or Houston to go to school, which was impossible with two children to care for). I stayed with my parents at first, but my mother is crazy and the stress nearly drove me to suicide. We moved into a run-down trailer with a lazy, sorry landlord (did not know that at first), then to a house with -- you guessed it -- a lazy, sorry, insane landlord.
Husband got kicked out, I moved into yet another run-down wreck of a house, which my landlord promptly lost because he wouldn't pay his VA housing loan. Back in with the parents. Dear God.
Fortunately, I had a decent job, and was able to save enough to get a trailer and move into a trailer park. Don't get me started on the landlord, or the psychopathic neighbors. Eventually was able to move onto some land that my sister was buying, after she decided she didn't want to build a house there.
One thing I swore was that my children would not be uprooted like I was. My oldest boys only switched schools once, and the youngest attended the same schools throughout.
So, now I'm in my twilight years. I'm going on 58. I have no relevant job skills, and ones I do have now are worth minimum wage, even if I could beat out all the younger, healthier men looking for work. I have arthritis, my childhood back injury is acting up, and my knees are bad. Not enough for disability, even if I could get to see a doctor.
What logic would entice me to even try to go back to school, at my age? What reasons would make enough sense for me to sell everything I own just to move somewhere that is not going to be any better for me? I'd be lucky to get $500 for every single thing I own -- all of it old, falling apart, out of date. That includes my van and my trailer.
Where do I go? What work could I do? Maybe if I was thirty years younger, I might do it. But now? At my age? Please.
This post sounds like that bullshit "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" line we hear from the Republicans. People that spout that sort of nonsense here should find somewhere their philosophy fits better.
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I'm trying desperately to get up there, or to Oakland or Berkeley, but haven't had a nibble in weeks, although there was a promising posting in Oakland this week.
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