Note well the term “poor.” These are not Dickensian or Joads poor, but largely Americans who by the standards of the 1940s would be considered lucky. Partly because of globalized Chinese consumer goods, and partly redistributive practices of a half-century, our current “underclass” has access to clothes, electronics, entertainment, apartments, cell phones, transportation, etc., undreamed of by the middle class of the recent past. I live in one of the poorest areas of one of the poorest counties in a bankrupt state; and those I see poor are not like those I saw 40 years ago in the same locale. –Victor David Hanson, Reflections on the Revolution in America

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For my job, I spend a decent amount of time in McCurtain County, the most southeast of Oklahoma’s 77 counties. It has natural beauty that few other areas of Oklahoma offer. Beaver’s Bend, as a state park and resort, is gorgeous. It reminds me of Lake Eufala, which I think is the most beautiful areas of our state.

McCurtain County is also filled with tiny little villages, places like Watson, Smithville and Hayword. When many people think of the term “village,” they imagine quaint, rural places that pepper the state of Vermont, or they think of the Middle Ages.

When I go to these tiny towns, I’m dumbstruck by the grinding, self-defeating poverty that riddles them. This is not an elitist reflection of people I see beneath me; I don’t think that way. Rather, when I see groups of people large enough to have schools and infrastructure, I’m baffled that they live in school buses and fifth wheels, that their crackerbox houses are anchored on cement blocks and fronted with unstable porches. Driving through many of these towns, you’ll see more windows without glass than windows containing glass.

I was looking at the car of an old man in one such town, and what I assume was his grandson was with him. As I did my work, the little boy, 7 or 8 at the most, pulled out a pack of Red-Man tobacco and put a large chunk in his mouth. I didn’t say a word because, frankly, I don’t care, but it’s shocking to see a child chewing leaf tobacco in front of an adult (the only other shock I’ve had with tobacco was the girls at Colorado College, which at in the early 90s had a cost of $20,000/year, who dipped snuff – turns out it was a boarding school thing, since you couldn’t smoke there for fear of detection).

I remember my trip to Ireland and England over the change of the year  in 2002-03, and when we left Ireland and took the train from Gatwick Airport into London, passing the shanty row houses. They resembled what many American home-owners call a work house or a storage shed, yet these were the homes of people. Although America has its highlights of soul-grinding poverty – think Detroit – it’s hard to imagine such a life.

When I go to the smaller villages in southeastern Oklahoma, I don’t get it. Being poor is one thing, but having access to running water and electricity and still living in filth is quite another. I grew up in the country, and my parents still live in my childhood home. Our place is middle class, but improved upon over the years and beautiful. It has a well-manicured front lawn, a long driveway, multiple large trees, the American flag on a pole in the center of the front pasture. Our front yard once had no fence, then had a rail fence, now has a chain-link fence. It didn’t turn into what it is overnight – it’s taken 33 years of work to get it to look like what it does now.

Across the street from us lives a large, multi-generational family of what is known (and I hate this term) poor white trash. Their property has been drenched in squalor since they obtained it – how many trailers are on it I do not know (I live in a trailer – this in and of itself is not bad, nor is my observation snobbery), and it has among other features a lagoon, weeds taller than most people, and quite possibly a human cemetery.

One of the sons of my generation, the one who lives directly across from us, rejected that poverty, took his plot of the family land, and manicured it. The family is poor and it took some time, but like many people who grow up poor, he clearly learned the lesson that as an economic addition it’s difficult, but as a state of mind it is soul-draining.

I quoted Hanson because his notion of what American poor is so differs from what is popularly thought throughout the world. In the most destitute areas of Africa, the life expectancy is short for a variety of reasons, but in many villages the cause of natural death is burning dung – yes, shit – in their stoves for warmth and for cooking. This leads to a plethora of respiratory illnesses, and take it from there.

Many people still have parents and grandparents who grew up in the Great Depression, and they have their stories about saving pennies. What a waste in so much of America that we have people who have resources – again, running water, indoor plumbing, electricity – and even though they live in a shithouse, they have a cell phone and a satellite dish. That may sound like an absurd generalization, but take a trip to the poorest areas of your area, and notice how many people have made sure there’s enough money in the budget for 200 channels, but not nearly enough for a few hours of labor cleaning up their own place.

Seeing such poverty is depressing when you know there’s nothing the people can do about it. Seeing it when they have options is infuriating, especially when you can count on it that they live off some form of public assistance.