Being raised on government assistance wasn’t for the faint hearted.
I recall issues constantly compounding themselves into worse issues.
My mom was fired from her work at the cleaning chemical factory, so I had to get a part-time job at the dollar store unpacking merchandise on the weekends to help out with the bills! The manager of the store hardly ever turned on the heat and I worked in the area next to the big refrigerators, so I had to wear a few layers when it was freezing outside. I will always remember when the heat at our home stopped working, and we had no warm water. There was a terrible blizzard outside, classes was canceled plus the radiator was just a frozen block of metal. We needed to get our gas furnace entirely replaced, but we couldn’t afford it. Luckily, we found an HVAC business that would finance the replacement, but we still had to come up with the cash to buy a new heater. The heating and air serviceman was such a nice guy. He actually let me borrow the money because he visited the store I worked in and said I was a very hard worker and that I was trustworthy. That’s the benefit of doing business with a local Heating and A/C business, it would seem. My mother also ended up securing a desk assistant job at that same HVAC business. Our heat worked better than ever after the new furnace was installed. I was happy when that radiator would begin banging aloud to let the whole family know it was working correctly. It would serve as a clothes line when I would come in from the snow and place my wet pants on top of it.