THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM 165
If there was a middle of the middle class that’s what my
family was when I was growing up. We weren’t wealthy but we
weren’t poor either. We had Chevrolet cars, a split-level house in
New Jersey and a very “Leave it to Beaver” kind of upbringing.
At the age of 12, my family had the rug pulled out from
under us financially. My father always supported the family
with a job on the railroad but he was also entrepreneurial and
started a gas station. It was a partnership with his brother.
They borrowed some money to do join a franchise opera-
tion. Unfortunately, there were price wars going on at the time
causing that business to fail and enter into bankruptcy. This
was in the early 1960s. At the time, the bankruptcy laws were
a lot tougher then than they are today and we lost everything.
We lost our house and our car.
We had to pack up and move. If you can picture that scene
from The Grapes of Wrath when the Joad family gets in their old
Model A and heads west on Route 66 looking for better times
in California after the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. That was like what
we went through moving to a place eighty miles away that we
could actually afford. The rent was $35 a month in a bungalow
that my grandmother owns.
I was the oldest of six. We went from a very comfort-
able middle class existence to being on the edge of poverty.
Financially it was devastating. Some people who have heard
this story say, “How did you put eight people — six kids and
two adults — in a two-bedroom bungalow?”
Well, it wasn’t easy but we made it work. I ended up on a
porch, very windswept, kind of drafty, in the winter freezing
cold. And my closet was a nail in the wall. I would take my
sweatshirt off at night and hang it on the nail.
I didn’t blame anybody. I understood that there are cir-
cumstances beyond everyone’s control. At the same time, my
attitude was, “I need to take my life in my own hands”. I had
taken too much for granted; I had had a very comfortable