My first problem, of course, as Garrison Keillor would point out, was that I was more or less an English major, though my BS was in Speech Education and I did qualify for a teaching certificate.
This led to the next factor: I started out in 1961 as a teacher at $3450 a year. I taught on an Indian reservation in the West out of choice (romantic and challenging) with approximately $5,000 being what some call “the scenery tax,” which means there isn’t enough population density to support well-paid school teachers. Teachers are paid according to the number and kind of students they have. Poverty-stricken students mean poverty-stricken teachers.
After five years of teaching I married a sculptor who wasn’t into the big money yet. In fact, the first big money came just AFTER he divorced me (hmmm) but some would say at least partially in response to my efforts. We figured out once that we were making seventeen cents an hour. In summer I worked for Bob for a dollar an hour or sometimes five dollars a day. So did all the locals, who were Indian and REALLY impoverished.
During the four years I was married to Bob, I got an allowance: $100 a month. I had a choice between an allowance and a salary and chose an allowance because I didn’t want to quarrel over whether each hour was working for the shop or working for myself. The idea was that I would write on my own time, but there never was my "own" time.
When Bob divorced me, my settlement was $1200. It sounds like less than it was because I went on living with him as though we were still married, though I stayed out at the ranch. During this time he paid for nearly everything, though I didn’t do any work for the shop. The divorce was in November and I went back to work at the school in March. He also gave me the van though it wasn’t in the agreement and he took me on a trip to Vegas at no cost to me.
I returned to teaching for two years, then moved back to Portland in 1973 which was bad timing, a recession. Giving up on teaching, I went to civil service employment as an animal control officer. Up until this time I had always been an obedient, reliable employee who didn’t make waves -- well, very much. Now I had union protection which guaranteed equal wages and my right to speak out. Also, I had insurance and a pension plan.
I was “rising through the ranks” but felt it was a low prestige field and wanted graduate education. In five years I’d accumulated a bit of cushion and even some furniture, but I had the idea that the Unitarian ministry was more in line with the life I wanted. I gave away everything, partly because I couldn’t afford to store it. I did keep most of my books. Four years of seminary wiped out all my assets, including pension fund, and put me deep in debt. But I got a first class education -- a hunting license for truly intellectual pursuits.
During two periods, marriage and seminary, no contributions were going into my Social Security account. If you count undergrad years, I was not making Social Security payments for about a dozen years. The consequences now are lower payments. I took no thought at all about retirement. When the denominational ministry advisers began to talk about it, I asked the man in charge of advising us what to do. “Marry a rich person,” he said. “That’s what I did.”
Idealistic and intent on getting back out west, I took a first ministry that was almost self-destructive: a circuit-riding arrangement in Montana among four tiny fellowships. My pay, $1,000 a month, was so low that many people didn’t think I COULD live on it. I traveled in an unheated van and slept in it at night, which I enjoyed and which preserved my sanity, but wasn’t good for my health -- I had turned forty in seminary. I had no health insurance. At one point my district exec sent a check for $500 so I could get my teeth fixed because toothache was nearly disabling me. Again, I was making minimal Social Security payments. No pension plan. I had not understood that taking low-pay ministries would equate to low-status and that would mean I was disqualified by most high-pay, high-status churches.
After three years I went to an interim in Kirkland, WA, which was a comparatively wealthy congregation but small. Instead of living in a tiny furnished apartment and keeping my belongings in storage, I rented a nice apartment, which was reckless for a one-year assignment. I had bennies but didn’t save anything.
The next two years were in Saskatoon, another small poor congregation that was farther from Browning than I had expected. I did not thrive there. I was idealistic, again, and pledged beyond what I ought to have. When I left, they were very upset that I took half my pledge with me. It has turned out that the reciprocity of Social Security with Canada was misrepresented. Universal health care turned out to be much exaggerated.
There were months after that when I lived in the van and had no income but I was back in Browning where I was happy. I took a low-pay job supervising study hall at the junior high as well as occupying the Methodist parsonage in exchange for preaching. This barter meant no payments into Social Security for the preaching part. But I had health insurance from the school.
Then I taught in Heart Butte for two years and was beginning to accumulate a little bit when the superintendent forced me to resign, saying that if I didn’t he would smear me so badly that I’d never teach again. (Every year he did this to three teachers, the ones who gave him the most trouble. I was preceded by the wife of the Lutheran minister.) Insurance was top of the line and fixed both holes in my retinas and for menopause issues. Instead of going right back to Portland at the end of the school year or looking for another teaching job, I hung on in Browning all summer, hoping to find something local. This used up all my savings again plus my school pension fund.
When I was forced to go back to Portland, I hit another recession. The good part was that it was so bad that unemployment was extended. The bad part was that I lived on my mother’s sofa for eight months before I got a City of Portland civil service job. That’s where I was when my mother died, leaving me enough money to buy this house in Valier where I found a job as well as paying off the final amount of my seminary debt.
The job, as my employer knew would happen, disappeared after five months when the newspaper ownership changed. In Montana one can be fired for no reason after five months but at six months, there has to be a reason. I had several of these five month jobs. There are no jobs in Valier, so even $8 an hour jobs mean driving sixty miles a day, which wore out my pickup and was risky in bad weather. I was on unemployment off and on until I took a teaching job in a small white town which was so bad that I quit after three months, thus losing unemployment benefits. I had also discovered that my health insurance through the school was worthless: it didn’t cover any pre-existing condition for a year, rather than the usual six months, and the rates -- which faculty paid in part -- were incredibly high because of several desperate medical cases among the faculty. For the next year I lived on the half of my City of Portland pension fund that a person is allowed to withdraw. Then I was 62, qualified for Social Security payments coming OUT instead of being paid In. But I still accumulated debt, mostly credit card debt and mostly for a bit of upgrading to kitchen and bath (new sinks and replacement of tub with shower).
Through all this time I was buoyed by the belief that as soon as I finished my book about Bob, I would make money. Instead I discovered that there are many costs to being an author: not just photocopying and postage, but also $20 fees per photo from the Historical Society, unreimbursed mileage for trips to said Historical Society (they had all of Bob’s archives), and the maintenance of my computer -- replacement when the first one died. I still have made no money at all from this book, though the community believes all authors get rich. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the prestige of the publisher, but everything to do with the economic tumbling and reconfiguring from digital technology.
(Tomorrow: Why it really hasn’t hampered me much to be poor.)
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