"True Philadelphians are hard working blue collar working class to lower middle class families. Thats true Philadelphia. Not privileged suburbanites who's parents paid for your college educations and you come out of school never having had a job prior making upper-class incomes and then rent "lofts" in Old City and think you are hip."
So people are supposed to just remain frozen in whatever economic class they've been born into?
My mother grew up in Kensington. She went to what was then Philadelphia College of Art, on a scholarship. My father's father was a Methodist minister (as my father later was, as well), so he came from a middle class, but not remotely wealthy, background. My mother's sister married another native-born Philadelphian with only a high school education who went on to make a six-figure income as a sales executive at a large corporation whose name you would recognize. That sort of thing was possible back then. My maternal grandfather trained to be a carpenter, but couldn't find work in that area during the Depression, and ended up working as a Philadelphia police officer. Eventually, he and my grandmother were able to move from a Kensington row house to a nice, but small, ranch house in Fox Chase, with Pennypack Park butting up against their back yard. (Of course, they didn't need anything large, even if they could have afforded it, since it was just the two of them.)
Yes, my parents paid for my siblings' and my college education. And we grew up in the suburbs, as well as Philadelphia. (Since my father was a Methodist minister, we moved around quite a bit, and my father only had partial choice in where we ended up moving.)
I don't think my mother or her parents would have taken kindly to the idea that if you are successfully upwardly mobile, and can provide your children with a free college education, you somehow are no longer a real Philadelphian, or your children are just alien interlopers when they move back to Philadelphia.
But this all has what you might consider a happy ending, since I have ended up economically downwardly mobile. That might not have gotten to the point it has now, had it not been for a relocation forced on me by health issues, but I have to admit I have not been very good at making the most of the money I have, unlike the grandparents I mentioned earlier. I think all of that otherworldly idealism I imbibed at home was not particularly helpful, but it might just be the way I am wired, as well.
Rudy |
Philadelphia, PA |
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