Re: Old And In The Way

[John Hughes <john@pureneasy.fsnet.co.uk>]

Mark, re

> > Look, I AM old:-)
> 
>   Yeah, yeah...you're a FEW years older than I am. That's all. It's 
>   hardly something you can blame me for. Take it up with my dad's sex 
>   drive.

You are entering the Forbidden zone... no one talks about their parent's
and "sex":-)

> > 8 track? A toy for kids when they emerged in the UK. I'd bought the
> > entire Who catalogue on vinyl by then.
>
>   They came out 1 year after the first Who album, perhaps less. 

Over there maybe, but not here. I don't recall seeing them much before
the early '70's here.

> > Sorry Mark, they (and I ) were working class. I never found much to 
> > be happy about being working class - ice on the inside of my bedroom 
> > window in winter, but British working class were emphatically not 
> > what I see portrayed on tv as white trash in the States.
>
>   You paint a pretty good picture of what's considered "white trash" 
>   over here. "There's a crack up on the ceiling/And the kitchen sink 
>   is leaking/Out of work and got no money/Sunday joint to bread and 
>   honey/What are we living for/Two roomed apartment on the second 
>   floor..."

Most British homes had no central heating - by American standards - but
working class people worked and worked hard. We may not have had much
(my parents couldn't afford a car until 1972, and when I got married it
was 4 years (1979) before we could afford a colour tv,) but we weren't
dependent on benefits, we ate well, we all went to good schools, and my
parents owned their own home. We just didn't have much by way of
material "luxuries" then.

> > The term came from the more elite whites who were searching for a 
> > word to use for whites who lived on the same socio-economic level as 
> > blacks, which (at the time) was pretty durn low. It has changed over 
> > the years to what one might find on the Jerry Springer show, or the 
> > Dukes Of Hazzard perhaps (I'm still unhappy that they shipped that 
> > one over to Merry Old).

Why? Miss Daisy was an icon:-)

> > But come ON now John! You can't go by what you see on TV!

I'd accept that Hollywood portrays an impossibly unreal picture of US
society but the concept of white trash is an easy one to understand. We
have a substantial element in this country who fit that bill exactly, as
defined in Lela's post earlier.

Cheers,

John