Every single Friday of my childhood save for the few months that we were living in California was spent at my Grandmother Ulrich’s home. It was a tiny place prompting me to sometimes wonder how it had been possible for ten people to live there. My mother made it sound like heaven so I pushed aside my thoughts that it may have been difficult. Later, when I was an adult I tried to imagine four girls sleeping in one double bed in a room so small that there was only a tiny pathway between the bed and the wall. Even more unbelievable to me was that my very tall and muscular uncles had also spent their nights together in a bed that is smaller than the one I share with my husband. 

The funny thing is that my mother and all of my aunts and uncles insist that the main thing for them was that they had a roof over their heads, food on the table and parents who loved them during the time of the Great Depression. Their enthusiasm for their good fortune helps me to better understand how difficult those times were for many Americans. There were literally folks living in their cars or finding shelter anywhere that there was an open door with people willing to help them in their time of need. 

Even as I had a picture of how terrible those days were it is still something that is unimaginable to me. So many Americans had no work, no savings, no way to enjoy even the most basic human needs. Little wonder that many of them headed as far west as they were able until the gasoline in their cars went dry or their autos simply broke down. 

My mother and my aunts and uncles often boasted that their father had paid cash for their home and the land that it stood on. He managed to hang on to a job that few would have wanted that kept his family fed with scraps of meat that he was able to buy at a reduced cost. He had turned the backyard into a farm that my grandmother cultivated and used to prepare simple meals that were so meager hat they left everyone in the family with a thinness that probably worked out well in those crowded beds. 

I suppose that I have never thought of my mother’s family as being poor because they had a spirit that kept them busy surviving in one place while so many others wondered where they would sleep at night. I have always felt that one’s wealth is more a point of view than a ledger. That Ulrich family was rich in spirit and drive. Everyone of them led honest and loving lives, ready to work hard and be nice to everyone they encountered. The legacy that has emerged from that tiny house in the shadow of downtown Houston is enormous. In only two generations from my grandparents everyone is a member of the middle class and a few have even become wealthy. As far as I know all but a couple of my grandparents’ great grandchildren have college degrees. Everyone enjoys a standard of living that Grandma and Grandpa would never have dreamed would happen to their descendants. 

I have more often than not seen the same kind of evolution in the economic and educational status of my immigrant students. It does not take long before they are enjoying the so called American dream. Sadly we are now in an era in which the economic opportunities have shrunk for everyone except for the richest people in our nation making it harder for young adults to make it like my grandparents did. While the so called Big Beautiful Bill gave the wealthiest among us one tax break after another, filling their coffers with more money that they will ever use, the average American is bearing the brunt of the ever increasing cost of living. 

The prices of land and homes has increased to a point that young people are more often than not in their mid thirties before they can afford to invest in property. It takes two incomes to achieve such a feat in most cases. The salaries of the working class have been eaten alive by inflation and at the same time those incomes have failed to increase at the same pace as the accumulation of wealth at the highest end of the spectrum.

All of this makes me wonder if we will actually see a stoppage in the kind of progress that made the descendants of my grandfather ever more successful. College even at the public level is brutally expensive. Salaries after graduation barely pay the price of the student loans used to earn the jobs. The twenty thousand dollar home of my twenties is now sitting at two hundred fifty thousand dollars in a state that is known for lower housing prices. Cars cost in the tens of thousands and a week of groceries might run two hundred dollars without frills. Now I wonder if there is a bubble that is about to burst and show us what life was life for my grandparents. 

I sincerely hope that our government leaders and businesses will come to their senses and understand the stresses that they are placing on those who are just staring out in life. They have been working hard just like my grandfather did but barely keeping apace with the rising costs. It’s up to us to find ways to remedy the economic uncertainties before they take us back to a time when so many suffered just to meet their basic human needs.