[lbo-talk] Re: What's at stake?

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Thu Nov 20 09:33:38 PST 2003


``...I spent much of my youth among well-to-do white suburbanites, and know well the archetype Chuck blasts. I couldn't stand any of them either, their pretension, their greed, their racism, their faux entitlement, their fucking golf bags and checked pants. I spent more time with the working class kids in the nearby trailer park...'' DP

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Yes, in effect I had a similar experience, only in a series of schools and neighborhoods we moved through in Los Angeles, then out to the suburbs. These changes were a reflection of my mother's class climbing through husbands, who brought a similar dynamic home with them.

All three husbands and fathers were obsessed with class, or social status. The crazy part was that the biggest idiot, with the weirdest ideas and personality was the richest. He was the rightwing Republican!

Looking back on them, the income and social differences were not as great as I imagined, while the effects were tremendous. Starting from just a school teacher salary, we got small apartments in rundown neighborhoods with mixed racial and ethnic groups of working class people. But the combined income of teacher and project engineer got us out to the exploding suburbs, with a quarter acre, a large ranch style house, a horse, two expensive cars, and a bunch of upper middle class social climbers as family friends.

Chuck Grimes



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