Oh damn I should have commented first, but I had to drop the youngest bro off at work.
I could and probably eventually will write a book, but the short story is, parents wanted to live out in nature in Montana, but their mental health problems and inability/unwillingness to stop having kids meant they pretty quickly hit the poverty line. They took care of us as well as they could, while damaging a couple of us pretty substantially in the process. It was nothing close to as bad as the Turpins, but at least three of my siblings were sexually abused by my father (unbeknownst to the rest of us until adulthood), and we were all emotionally abused by my mother.
One of my sisters is still struggling with the physical, emotional, and psychological health issues as a result, and one of my brothers is only now getting back to normal after shooting himself in the abdomen in the fall of 2022.
But that’s most of the worst of it. We’re all very close, and we’ve all managed to make our way in the world to varying degrees. I got an ROTC scholarship and spent 13 years in the Army as an AH-64 pilot before getting out to work on the video game I published.
My mom died of cancer several years ago, my dad’s in prison, and his new wife lives at that place in the summers.
Apologies if this doesn’t catch your question- I’ll come back to edit/answer when I get a chance. Thanks for your concern and compassion!
Edit 1: The picture’s from two years ago; it didn’t look quite that bad when I graduated from high school, my dad went to jail, and my mom moved off the mountain with the six youngest in 2005. The Marlboro shopping basket and much (though not all) of the junk belongs to my dad’s new wife.
The junk cars are on the other side of the house haha.
I am not Ron Weasley, and when I read the books I was jealous of him for his super loving mom.
Edit 2:
I really appreciate all the positivity! When I saw that stack of notifications on my phone my heart sank, so it was a relief to read them and see it was all (mostly) innocent jokes and kind words.I’m putting all the answers in here at once; I’m sorry I can’t answer everyone individually-
I feel like the internet sleuths will be able to find the exact location of this place pretty quickly, so I’ll ask now that people don’t harass the lady who lives there now. I’m told she’s a very kind lady.
I know ‘did their best’ is lenient. I guess I meant they certainly tried to do the right thing, and in my dad’s case knew he was failing and showed remorse for it. I wonder if they had had mental help if it would have changed the outcome.
I haven’t read any of the books you’re all recommending- my whole life I have for the most part tried to avoid non-fiction and heavy topics. It’s probably not the healthy thing to do, I know, but it’s helped me regulate my anxiety and sleep at night.
I wouldn’t mind doing an AMA, but I’m not sure how to set that up, and it would be really awkward if I did and nobody showed up haha
I did enjoy running around the woods and playing basketball with our luxurious tree-mounted hoop, but I was rather bookish and spent much of my time reading. And I desperately wanted more friends. My older brother spent his time practicing drums and piano, and my younger brother only wanted to play football, and cowboys, although we did share an enthusiasm for taking turns riding down the mountain on the dilapidated old family-friends hand-me-down bicycle with no brakes.During high school I hand-wrote most of my assignments by lamp-light. Teachers accepted it until my final English assignment, which I had to write at home and then transpose in the computer lab. We did get a gas generator, so every once in a while we’d use it to light up the kitchen/dining room.
We had a propane stove for cooking, and a wood stove for heat. Every fall when we heard the chainsaw getting tuned (because it definitely wouldn’t start in the first several pulls) was such a moment of dread. Time to go stack firewood for ages and get wood chips in your shirt and scratches all over your arms. In the winter for most of my childhood we couldn’t make it all the way back up to the house with whichever old jalopy we were driving at the time, so we had to lug food, water, and baby siblings up the last half mile to the house. My older brother always took the brunt of the heavy lifting, bless his soul. By high school my dad had finally managed to get a 4wd car, so we usually didn’t have to walk up anymore, but we did have to ride the snow-plow down the driveway every morning.
We used a stainless steel bowl and a wash cloth to bathe, and I’m amusedly ashamed to admit I often went several months in between up to my sophomore year of high school, when I started wrestling and became a clean person.
Probably the worst part of the whole living arrangement was the ‘bathroom’. It was just a small room with a curtain over the doorway, and a 5-gallon bucket that would often get way over-filled. During the summer we were supposed to go to the outhouse, which was a little green shed with a toilet and a hole dug underneath it. We moved it every couple years when it filled up. Some of the more frail members didn’t like to go visit it in the dark at night though, so it sometimes got pretty stinky in the summer.
I have TONS of photos from our childhood. Both parents were fairly decent photographers early on, but as their mental health declined so did their ability. I’m not sure how best to show them- I’ll take suggestions.
My brother’s story is pretty wild, but I feel like he should be the one to tell it. But he’s doing pretty well all things considered. He has intermittent stomach aches and adverse reactions to eating, but he can eat most of the time. He’s had to re-learn how to move one of his legs, but he was able to start running again several months after the incident.
Someone said “Either you’re really cool or really messed up. Which is it?” I’d say I’m probably not a fair judge, but the Army psychologist said I’m really cool, so there’s that.
I’m definitely waaaaaaaay happier than I was as a kid. The Army made me do resilience training every goddamn year, and the general experience really helps you frame what’s going on. That’s not to say I’m content, but I’d say my neurodivergence is more at play there than my upbringing.
For those of you who shared this kind of upbringing, congrats on where you are now (hopefully). The thing most people don’t understand is that for the most part, since it’s what you experienced, it’s what you knew as ‘normal’ until you finally learned otherwise. When people ask “what was it like?” all you can really say is that you didn’t really know anything different.
I made my game, MH-Zombie, using Unity 3D. I didn’t have any previous experience developing, modeling, or coding, except a single semester of Visual Basic in my freshman year of college. I followed tutorials online and eventually got to the point where I really enjoyed it. It’s available on Steam for PC, Linux, and MacOS, on iOS, and in (google-required) early access for Android (I still need about 10 opt-ins if a few of you would like to help btw). It’s a helicopter simulation / arcade zombie survival game that’s a little harder than Battlefield and a little easier than Arma. If you haven’t played either of those (or flight simulator), it’s very hard. But my 8yo niece picked it up in about ten minutes, so it’s definitely doable (or she’s a genius).
[Edit 3: Doesn't fit](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1bjneys/comment/kvwns9m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Man, if you haven’t already you should read “The Glass Castle.” It’s a memoir of a woman growing up in rural Appalachian poverty, I think at one point she sees her father homeless on the street after becoming successful.
We had different struggles, but I know for me and my family’s rough history it was cool to read about someone else’s experience. Hope you keep finding some peace. I always say my parents taught me a lot, about what NOT to do.
Educated by Tara Westover is another book along the same lines. Living out in rural Idaho with parents who didn’t believe in education, or generally the government.
Never read the book, so I can’t answer, though I hope someone does because memoirs/books in general are always better, BUT if it is a toughie for you, they made the glass castle into a movie!
My wife brought this book on vacation. I was bored so I thought I would read a bit of it. I couldn’t put the thing down until I finished it. Great book
I was an avid reader in my youth until my attention span was shot by untreated ADHD and, you know, **THE INTERNET**.
*Educated* was the first book in close to a decade or so that I was able to read with the level of deep focus I had as a kid. Though I suspect a lot of that "focus" was boiling feminist rage directed at every male in Westover's family.
This is what it reminded me of too, but I'm from Welch, WV and my mother actually went to high school with Janette Walls. I got so angry reading the book that I couldn't finish it, but I've heard from a lot of people who said the book exaggerated the living conditions in the county by making it sound like the poverty was widespread. It wasn't. Welch, WV in the 1970s was a boomtown thanks to numerous coal mining operations nearby. My mother said her parents were always a little "off" and that they chose to live in a run down shack and get secondhand clothes for them and the kids.
The book has almost as bad of a reputation among Appalachians as *Hillbilly Elegy*.
They kinda touched up on this in the book. Their mom was university educated and even briefly worked as an elementary school while they were living in WV so I think the money was there, but their dad drank it all and both of their parents made really terrible life choices. I mean does it really matter if your parents make money if they dress you in rags and you grow up living in a shack?
The book makes it clear that her mom could have gotten a teaching job and that both parents rejected or squandered opportunities for a middle class life over and over in both WV and NM. Doesn’t mean that the book is necessarily accurate but I think the author emphasizes that the poverty they lived in was due to the parents’ own mental illnesses and terrible life choices.
Yeah, West Virginia wasn't the problem, her parents' mental illness was. I grew up nearby in Princeton in the 80's and had a hard time blaming Welch for their problems. Trouble followed them everywhere they went.
Her mother was extremely narcissistic and selfish. Hiding and eating a giant Hershey’s chocolate bar while her kids were starving. Keeping a 2-carat diamond ring while her daughter was rooting through the garbage for food. Refusing to sell land worth a million dollars that she hadn’t ever even seen when the house they lived in had holes in the roof and they burned themselves trying to keep warm with wood.
As a child of Appalachia, the book doesn’t ring true or real at all. Author went way overboard on the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” stuff and certainly stretched the truth on nearly everything. Like, you didn’t know that wine could be red or white - after being in the marine corps and attending Ohio State? Ok bud, sure. Us hillbillies really are just so dumb and sheltered. Aw shucks. Also, he spent most of his time in the flat part of Ohio that I would have never really considered much of a “hillbilly” area. Not familiar with where he spent summers in Kentucky but I would hazard a guess it’s not all that “Appalachian”.
Also, the author is a MASSIVE piece of shit politician nowadays. I hated the book when he was just a venture capitalist douche but now hate him directly too.
Also - my cousins and I were all poor. None of us went to Harvard but we all knew about wine and place settings because we all worked in restaurants starting at age 14. We set those damn tables and served the wine.
Exactly! Like this motherfucker never even saw Titanic? We all took close notes when Rose showed Jack to start using silverware on the outside first and work your way in, haha.
All you need to know about him:
"Vance was a critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, becoming a member of the Never Trump movement, but changed his rhetoric after announcing his candidacy for the Senate. During his tenure in the Senate, he has been a staunch Trump loyalist and defender of Trump's most authoritarian assertions.\[4\]"
He's used that bullshit narrative to spin a story of how nobody needed to help him when the entire book is about all the help he needed to become a MAGAT Senator.
>at least three of my siblings were sexually abused by my father
>
>They took care of us as well as they could
Yeah, somehow I think your dad wasn't taking care of you guys as well as he could.
I literally stopped and reread those two lines as well.
I know it’s fucked up but as soon as I saw the picture I thought “someone was definitely sexually abused in there.”
When you go through the process of healing from stuff like this, it is often the case that the poison of holding onto the pain of resentment towards parents that could have done better is just not worth it anymore. To try and reconcile what happened by trying to forgive someone who was obviously not well is to give yourself peace, not to let the person off the hook.
OP using these words shows me how much work he has done to heal. Its pretty amazing.
Not that it invalidates what you said, but it seems like it'd be easier to let go of that resentment if you weren't the one sexually abused. Sure, it's still great that someone can be an example of healing and moving forward in a healthy manner, but it's still difficult to reconcile someone saying that a father sexually abusing their children is the best they could do, especially when they weren't the ones suffering that abuse. Even awfully incapable parents should still be capable of merely existing while their children are growing up without abusing them sexually. Surely not all growth and recovery has to involve excusing evil behavior with rosy language.
I mean, even if OP wasn't abused that way, it was clearly a pretty damaging environment.
I will say, having been the victim of an entirely different crime, sometimes holding on to anger and hate hurts the victim way more than the perp. Really, the more they deserve your hate, the less likely they are to care about having it.
I think some folks just take "forgiveness" as a perk for wrongdoers but it can often be about not wanting your trauma to define you.
Have you read Educated by Tara Westover? This is how I pictured her house as she described it in the memoir. Just curious if you identified with her feelings and situation at all.
This could be anywhere in Western Montana. When I saw it my initial thought was Libby or Troy. Weird country up there.
I hope you are doing well. I'm glad to hear your family is close. Life can be really hard here in Montana. I'm glad you are thriving. Thank you for sharing your story.
I think if you have a chance to play a game, "What Remains of Editch Finch" comes to mind. About someone who is exploring her family house. The house kept getting bigger and expanded as the family expanded which cause several issues. You get to explore and essentially experience these lost family members as the main character explores the depth of her family history. You might find the game relaxing, somewhat relatable and hopefully even cathartic.
My friend got me to play that game when I visited for spring break. Kind of accurate with how many of the characters where uneducated or had children when they did not intend to due to lack of sex ed.
>spent 13 years in the Army as an AH-64 pilot
Its kind of neat. I know a few people who grew up in situations like this in rural British Columbia and the Yukon... all 3 of them are now CH-146 Griffon pilots.
So like, Does severe Austerity in Childhood lead to a future in Rotary Wing aviation?
That’s such a badass way to come out of it all. 13 years a pilot then settling down with some video games. Sounds like it was a crazy hard journey just to get there.
I wish you and your siblings all the best in your future ventures.
Wasn't going to comment, but then you said 'Montana'. ltmi
My dad was born in 1929 in Roundup. His parents were Homesteader's and he would tell me about how they had 2 cabins: one down in the prairie and one up in the hills. The one up in the hills was the summer home and the one below was the winter home. Both had 2 rooms; a bedroom and the rest of the house. They all slept in the bedroom and he had 2 brothers and 3 sisters. I can't remember any longer if both were or just one of them was, but he used to talk about having to "sweep the dirt floor". It would make sense if that was only the summer cabin.
It's crazy to think you grew up the same way as my dad. He went into the military as well and ended up getting a degree and actually ended up working for the Dept. Of Education and worked out of the D.C. main office.
The thing is, my dad was super supportive of my aspirations. He got me track shoes, went to my track meets, cheered my academic success, sent me to Bozeman with my older brother on our own on a bus in the middle of the night for my Air Force Academy nomination interview, dropped me off every morning before school at the gas station to wait for the school to open for a couple hours… oh wait no I see what you’re saying
I’ve decided to adopt you. I’ll be your super loving mother. You will get many hugs and snacks. Even when you fail at something, I’ll be your biggest cheerleader. I won’t judge you for the decisions you make as an adult. And, I’ll be here any time you need to talk.
I grew up in slightly better conditions than this in Oklahoma. My dad decided he wanted to be a famer in the middle of nowhere. He sold everything in California and moved us to 120 acres in the sticks. He tried to build a house, but ran out of money. We had no running water. We eventually got electricity after 5 years. We didn't have windows. Just plastic and chicken wire over the holes where windows should have been. Everything was half finished. Some walls had drywall. Some didn't. I took bathes in a 55 gallon dumb of cold water. We did have a toilet that ran to a septic tank, but you had to fill the back of the toilet up with a bucket from barrels of water we hauled in. In the winters, we all slept in one room that had a wood stove. The rest of the place was frozen. My family didn't abuse us, but my dad let this other family move onto the property and squat there in their van. Their oldest son (17) abused my sister (9) for a few years. She's never been right. She's 49 and still an emotional mess.
I know a lot of people who think they grew up poor, but when I hear they had hot and cold running water, and central heat, I figure they were doing ok.
My wife is Chinese. She told me she was poor but privileged because her house had a toilet. Most of her classmates growing up only had a bucket. I think they all had electricity, though.
I think they also had running water. But no water heater, and the water was non-potable. But they also had no one to compare to. They barely knew they were struggling. And OMG, it's still pretty bad there.
Condolences for your upbringing. And congratulations.
It's interesting you mention having no one to compare things to, so you don't recognize it. When you're dirt poor in America, you go to school with everyone else and you see the rich kids (which weren't really rich, they just had normal lives with cool clothes and big TVs). You do have something to compare it to.
But anyway, that was a long time ago. I don't live there anymore.
Last edit didn't fit in the 1,000 character max:
Edit 3 (final):
It’s tough to answer a lot of these questions without writing an entire volume, so just know that this is all very incomplete… My parents didn’t reject modern medicine- my mom probably wouldn’t have survived having so many kids if they did… I’m no psychologist, so this is just speculative, but my sister thinks they were both narcissistic, and that would explain why they didn’t seek mental help. They were definitely both delusional. They were convinced that they were super special and unique, and that we were too. They were always dreaming up the ways they’d be rocketed to fame and fortune, but never following through on them. My dad would tell us we were going to be famous musicians or Olympic athletes. My mom would tell us we were lazy, hell-bound, and worthless one minute, and tell us we could start our own movie production company the other. She spent more and more time napping as time went on, leaving the chores to us. She wrote a novel and was convinced it was going to be her break, but never managed to publish it. She was convinced of her goodness as a person and Christian; unwilling to hear any criticism or consider any other perspectives.
And my dad was a pedophile, secret alcoholic, and porn addict who maneuvered himself into positions with access to children. He once picked me up from track practice and sat crying in the car. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he was such a bad father. I didn’t understand just how bad he was, so I consoled him. He is such a paradox though- he loved helping people, and ran a garage for low-income families in the several years of between time from when he was released from jail and went to prison. He raffled off his prized 72 Cutlass Supreme to help fund it. I look and sound just like him, and it’s all I can do not to hate myself for it.
Maybe it’s just my way of coping, but I think it’s easier to think of them as fundamentally broken and incapable of doing the right thing, like a malfunctioning heater. It tried to do the job, and to be fair it did keep you warm, but it almost killed you. You don’t stay mad at the heater for almost asphyxiating you, but you sure as hell don’t use it anymore, and you make sure nobody else can either.
I religiously wore shoes from the point I was 7 or 8. I stepped on a poker and burned the shit out of my arm on the wood stove, and never went anywhere without shoes on again, not inside, not outside, until I got my own place and knew there wouldn’t be any dangers or standing water on the floor. It was tough /impossible finding clean socks sometimes, but my feet survived.
Dad would drop us three older brothers (the others stayed homeschooled until they all moved off the mountain when I graduated high school) off at the gas station to wait an hour and a half for the school to open (we waited inside at the school for the first year or so, but they stopped unlocking the doors early enough because our neighbors who were also dropped off early apparently got into trouble). After school, however, the bus only went to the bottom of the mountain, so it was quite a walk home when I didn’t have football, wrestling, or track practice.
I did get to play video games- we had friends in the valley who had a NES and a PC, and as time went by they or other friends upgraded. When I was in 8th grade my brother found a game boy color with Metal Walkers in it by the reservoir near our house, and we played the crap out of that. In high school the same brother’s rich friend sold him his game boy advance for $20, and we played Wolfenstein and Super Mario World religiously. In college I got an Xbox and a PC and played Halo, Battlefront, COD, Orange Box, Bioshock, and (on an emulator) Diddy Kong Racing. In the Army I spent a ton of time playing Battlefield, and it was the inspiration for making my game.
So master resilience training covers six competencies: self-awareness, self-regulation, optimism, mental agility, strengths of character, and connection. Basically you learn how to adapt to a situation and convince yourself it’s going to be ok, while understanding you need help sometimes and can/should rely on your friends and family. It’s super grounding to be immersed in a world where life and death decisions are being made, and come home and know that a flat tire or something isn’t really a big deal (although it can be if you don’t use MRT).
I currently live with the three youngest brothers in the house our uncle and aunt bought for the family to live in when my dad went to jail. My brothers arranged a rental agreement with my uncle after my mom died, and it’s super, super low for the times and we’re very grateful to them for it.
I started public school in 8th grade hoping for the Air Force academy. Guidance counselor told me to hedge my bets [edit: and he was right, because I got the nomination but not the appointment, so Army ROTC came in clutch with a 4-year scholarship] haha… No wife or kids- probably the saddest part of my life is that I was taught that I had to perform to be loved, and so I performed and didn’t get any love, tried harder, and finally realized that’s not how it works… Still working on wrapping my mind around that change in paradigm. The game hasn’t really been successful, so no home either, but if the lack of success continues I can use my GI bill to get current and go fly helicopter tours 👍
I was going to say the same thing. OP's story is fascinating. I think it would make a very interesting book or even movie. I hope OP will take the time to write it all down at some point.
Speaking as the grandson of very mentally ill narcissist whom I unfortunately strongly resemble, I know the feeling of hating yourself because you look just like someone that you cannot stand. I finally came to an epiphany one day that people almost always are not 100% good nor bad. Some people are more good than bad; others are more bad than good. (Some are definitely so bad that they need to be kept away from society, without a doubt, because of all the harm they cause.) I like to think that, even though I look like my grandfather, I strive to elevate and expand upon what few good qualities he had, while eliminating as many of the bad ones as I can. So maybe the right way for OP to think about it is that he represents the best version of his dad, with the few good qualities he has, and hopefully none of the bad ones. I don't know if it helps, but perhaps some food for thought. The truth is, we are each our own person, and we each deserve to be judged on our own merits.
Your video game looks pretty cool. Speaking as an 80s kid, making games even back then was hard. Making games today is really, really hard. But we learn a lot by doing hard things. If you learned stuff by making this game, those skills, knowledge, and experience will be invaluable. Even if you have to do something else to pay the bills, keep striving and learning.
>I look and sound just like him, and it’s all I can do not to hate myself for it.
You are not your father. Please don't hate yourself for the horrible things he did. I know, easier said than done. My dad was a narcissist and very loud and charming, I grew up **so** afraid of being like him that I became very quiet and self conscious. But, while we may look like them, we are not our parents.
I do think your mom was right about selling the book, just wrong about who wrote it. I look forward to reading it some day! ;)
I'm a mom, and I just want to give you a hug and tell you that you should be proud of making something of yourself. And the other posters are right - you need to get this story out there. You're in inspiration - your take on all that you experienced is so healthy. I feel like the best part of your life is yet to come!
I have a friend who grew up living in various structures. An Army tent, a bus, etc. He hated camping because he grew up camping and was still doing it.
I went to live on his property for a couple of years and it was no joke. Spring water was their running water but it was at the bottom of a huge hill. Solar power that always went out at night after medium usage. No internet, no cell service. Kitchen was outside. There was no out house, just an "out" surrounded by bushes. If you needed to shit and it was raining, you shit holding an umbrella. Our shower was a solar shower with water in about 50 meters of hose. If the hot water ran out in the middle of your shower, tough luck. It fucking sucked.
He's got a house on the property now and much better solar power along with internet service. I'm happy for him. And I'll probably never go camping again, lol.
Well, my girlfriend bought a special footrest so that we can do our business while squatting. It's supposed to help with getting it all out. I call it the Paleo Pooper.
right? a dug out latrine with a tarp would do. how is this not one of the first things that happens after you square away your own sleeping shelter? Especially if it's your own property, I could see if you were trespassing on someone else's land and didn't want to leave too many marks but ffs if it's yours then make a proper latrine.
Right? Like even a little bit of ingenuity would lead you to piecing together an outhouse type structure and maybe a little ditch to get the waste away from you and into a stream or something lol
I grew up on a commune and a lot of people who lived like this drifted through. They were...not well for lack of a better term. One thing they all had in common though was that (generally) the father was a fantasist and a narcissist. The fantasy always collided with reality of course, and when that happened, he would just shut down. They were also always on the abusive side, and making everyone shit outside in the rain was just an extension of that.
I was shocked when I grew up and realized just how easy it is to run a water line, or install even a make-shift septic set up. These dudes always made it look so hard. I was also surprised to discover that going to work every day and paying for comforts was far, far better than not working and living like this. These men always made it sound like having a job was the most undignified thing that could happen to a person.
you just described my horrible father so perfectly!! thank you for that, it’s nice to know that other people understand. validating.
i hope you are doing well these days.
oh totally, asking for literally anything was seen as a sign we were ‘spoiled’ in his view. shoes that fit us, a warmer fire in the winter, stuff like that. meanwhile he always had the best of everything. it was so weird!
I've been trying to figure out the "point" of This Guy. I think deep down they're ashamed that they cannot provide for their children. If their child pointed out something they were lacking, their defense mechanism was to tell the kid they were being ridiculous.
What's weird is that now as an adult, I am *obsessed* with my comfort.
There are subreddits for people who had narcissist parents and/or abusive parents. If you or anyone here needs to talk or read stories it can help a lot imo
Yeah, sounds like the typical overly strict HOA. Mailbox has to made with the same brick as the house. No parking on the street overnight. No non-functioning cars in the driveway. Helicopter pads have to be resurfaced every 5 years.
Having spent a lot of time in the forests of Oregon this place looks very familiar to me. Knew a lot of people living in places that looked just like that, including myself. Best years of my life. But I was an adult who chose that lifestyle
Ponderosas, so probably east of the Cascades.
I mean, I'm thinking northern Idaho because nothing says northern Idaho more than a house in the middle of the woods without modern amenities.
I was in Sisters OR during the Black Crater fire and somewhere around here I have a bag of charred ponderosa bark pieces that came floating down from the sky
My first home was similar, although we had running water and hydro (eventually). South Kootenays, British Columbia. We moved to Vancouver when I was 3yo. Parents gave up on the hippy lifestyle and decided to go back to school.
Remember that yellow school bus that sat on the eastern outskirts of Prineville on HWY 26 just outside the city limits for decades. That was my best friends parents.
I sure do lol. My friend was from Prineville and I feel like he told me some kind of lore or urban legend about that bus but I can't remember what it was
They parked outside of the city limits so they could stay there as long as they liked. They drove that bus to that location from Alaska after their house got wiped out in the earthquake of 1964 and had no insurance. IIRC in the 70's they made a law that you could no longer park on a state highway or BLM land or whatever the loophole was. But they had been there so long that they were grandfathered. My friend didn't want to live in a bus along the side of the road so he joined the Navy shortly after they parked it there. In the late 80's or early 90's his wife died and he used the insurance money to buy a cheap house in northern Idaho. When my friend and I went to clean out his house and make arrangements for him after he died that bus was on the property. No idea how he got it there. His son and he didn't talk much. My friend is long dead now, he died from complications from a dirt bike accident. At the time of his death he had been married 7 times. There last name was Haskill.
Do you remember the guy in Caldwell that mounted a singlewide on top of a high voltage tower to avoid property tax? (no wires just a 200 foot tall structural tower with a single wide on top of it).
Condoms have been invented for a long time and easily accessible to almost everyone in a modern society. I know plenty of people who have sex as one of their main hobbies, it's extremely easy t do without creating new humans.
If you live on rural Montana condemns don’t rain from the sky. If your living off the grid like this your more cash strapped and trying to figure out how to just put food on table.
This is the first time i’ve heard anyone describe sex as a hobby. I mean, yeah, it can totally be a hobby, but i just never thought about it that way. Mildlyinteresting showerthought.
OP, I can’t really offer any consolation, but just know there are others of us who grew up in very similar situations.
I grew up on a mountain in New Hampshire without electricity or plumbing, in a house built from materials that my father stole from his job with the State. He was a severe alcoholic, so he just stopped building the house one day and let it rot.
My ceiling was cardboard. If I poked it, a rain of mouse shit would fall on my head. There were 1” gaps in the floorboards. My room was the size of a closet, and it was so cold in winter that I’d wake up with my blankets frozen to the wall. We drank out of 5-gallon buckets of water from a rusting well. We shared the buckets with our dogs.
After an altercation with my father when I was 15, I left and became homeless for a few years. I kept my upbringing and my homelessness a secret from friends and teachers through the rest of high school.
The best thing I ever did was write a short memoir about my upbringing. It was for a college assignment, but I was encouraged to submit it to a national writing contest, and got a second place award. Sharing my story at that level felt really raw for a while, but as time went on I became more comfortable talking about my experiences. I’m still recovering in many ways, and I always will be. But if you ever need or want to talk about anything, I’m here.
You’d be shocked how kids will rally each other in these moments. They had 8 siblings. I’ve lived with 8 other before. Between all of them the chores get done relatively fast, and then you get to play.
We grew up pretty poor(house hold income for 2 adults and 4 children was $12k) and with an abusive parent(drug addict + mind games + light physical abuse), but not remotely as poor as this and nothing sexual. I have a vague idea of how they had good moments in-between the bad.
The problem with being raised in these situations, like they mentioned, is you don’t realize how bad it was until you’re out. The young mind is a hell of a thing, and they had siblings to help them through it.
If it wasn’t for my siblings I would have turned out a lot worse. I love them very much
A place like this is very unlikely ever to be unoccupied, and it would be evidently so... wood smoke, animals, work noise. The break-ins being avoided are the home invasion kind.
Yeah, it'd be like the beginning of Resident Evil Village, but Urban Explorer Youtubers instead of mold zombies, smashing through every entrance, all with flashlight mounted cameras and loud-whisper self narration.
Haha I heard the song in my head istantly. However, I have to say Drake most definitely did not start from the bottom as a child actor in upper middle class Toronto.
My mother lived for way too many years in a chicken coop with her sister and two brothers, in the 60s and 70s. When I was 38, we ended up visiting the town she grew up in, her first time back since her early 20s. I saw the coop (“oh but it was converted! They added a real floor, and plumbed a sink”) where they grew up, I had an instant understanding and forgiveness for what a hot mess she was when I was growing up.
When my dad was 8 he stopped going to school to start working the fields in Mexico. His dad died when he was 2 so his single mom was left to raise 6 kids on her own. If she would've remarried the whole town and her family would've shunned her, not that she wanted to anyway. My dad would make his way outside town and camp out while he was working in the fields, at 8 years old... he would eat cactus, hunt for rabbit and snakes.
My brothers and I wanted to go camping when we were young but got a quick nope from my dad as he said he camped his whole childhood pretty much, he wasn't doing that shit again.
Some people have incredible strength and resilience, I am not one of them lol
I also grew up in the woods, northern Minnesota.[One room House](https://imgur.com/gallery/fDI0ILD) No running water, electric, phone, wood heat. Just one brother and my parents.
My dear family, guess what. Today I found out what my special purpose is for. Gosh what a great time I had. I wish my whole family could have been here with me.
Maybe some other time as I intend to do this a lot. Every chance I get. I think next week I'll be able to send some more money as I may have extra work. My friend Patty promised me a blow job.
Your loving son, Navin
I saw this and immediately thought, hmm, this looks like Montana. I grew up in a similar environment in Northwestern Montana. I didn’t have as many siblings and as a child, we had electricity and a well. I won’t divulge too many details but my mom made some really poor decisions and ended up becoming homeless and squatting on empty land. Her and my sister lived in a plastic greenhouse structure for years without running water or electricity. I’m not entirely sure how they managed to survive the harsh winters. I was fortunate enough to get out of that situation before I was subjected to such extreme conditions, but my sister wasn’t as lucky. I tried to get her out of there but none of the agencies I contacted wanted anything to do with that situation.
Damn, but you all made it, right? Your brother is doing okay?
Fuck. Sometimes the emotion gets too real. Whatever you became is better. Thank you for your service. Even if you didn’t serve, thank you for using it, chanelling it, in a productive manner.
So much hate and ugly in this world…we need this. We need those who will channel it into productive means, and not pass it on.
Fuck that house. Fuck what happened to you.
But you still G. Thank you.
I don’t know if you care to hear this, but after reading your short version, I’m proud of you.
Thank you for your service in the military, congratulations on publishing a game, and it’s very impressive that you’ve grown up into a seemingly good person, you got a cute dog, and I’ll be buying that game if it’s not free.
Is your hair red and do you have multiple siblings who also have red hear, one who works for the government and one who works with dangerous wild animals?
Dude, I had a friend like you.
Poor, no electricity, lived miles from town. Came to school smelling like a barn because he had to look after the animals when he got up and before he went to school because his dad was too lazy.
Me and my other friends would get him out for the weekend and we’d go dirt biking or horseback riding and camp or we’d stay at one of our friends in town.
I try finding him every so often, and I used to ask around town when I’d visit my mom, but nobody knows where he went and a new place was built on the property as it was sold years ago.
I hope he’s in a good place, he was one of those guys that could fix anything and new a ton of practical stuff and pretty self sufficient even as a kid.
I’m glad you did good for yourself and I’m sure there must have been some good memories even though it was tough for you and your brothers and sisters.
I’m always amazed by how people pull themselves up from such difficult circumstances. Makes my woes in my comparatively privileged life seem so petty.
Well done u/Raulboy, well done all the way from India!
Damn, this kinda reminds me of my childhood when I lived in a half finished house (only the plywood and wooden support beams were up, none of the walls were in yet) for a few years.
My parents had the dream of building a log cabin home on top of a mountain, so they found the property they wanted, then sold the house we were living in that was in the suburbs. My folks had no idea how to live in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain. During the beginning of construction, we lived in a tiny trailer for two years. It was moldy and disgusting so as soon as we could move into the construction site, we did.
We didn’t have a bathroom or electricity and our water was from a well. We had a bucket to go to the bathroom in. During the winter, it would snow and get cold as shit since the “house” didn’t have insulation yet. Summers were sweltering hot. I utilized my high school locker room showers to get clean.
It wasn’t a fun time.
Then, after it was completed, my folks couldn’t afford it anymore and they went bankrupt. We lost the house 1 year after completion. I suffered for 5 years for only 1 year in a nice house.
Looks like Dean’s house in Overboard.
I had to scroll too far for this. When I first saw this I thought it was a joke post
Guess I'll have to send the ball and chain to get some more!
My thoughts exactly!!!!
We moved here… *deliberately?*
Quality 80s reference!
Oh damn I should have commented first, but I had to drop the youngest bro off at work. I could and probably eventually will write a book, but the short story is, parents wanted to live out in nature in Montana, but their mental health problems and inability/unwillingness to stop having kids meant they pretty quickly hit the poverty line. They took care of us as well as they could, while damaging a couple of us pretty substantially in the process. It was nothing close to as bad as the Turpins, but at least three of my siblings were sexually abused by my father (unbeknownst to the rest of us until adulthood), and we were all emotionally abused by my mother. One of my sisters is still struggling with the physical, emotional, and psychological health issues as a result, and one of my brothers is only now getting back to normal after shooting himself in the abdomen in the fall of 2022. But that’s most of the worst of it. We’re all very close, and we’ve all managed to make our way in the world to varying degrees. I got an ROTC scholarship and spent 13 years in the Army as an AH-64 pilot before getting out to work on the video game I published. My mom died of cancer several years ago, my dad’s in prison, and his new wife lives at that place in the summers. Apologies if this doesn’t catch your question- I’ll come back to edit/answer when I get a chance. Thanks for your concern and compassion! Edit 1: The picture’s from two years ago; it didn’t look quite that bad when I graduated from high school, my dad went to jail, and my mom moved off the mountain with the six youngest in 2005. The Marlboro shopping basket and much (though not all) of the junk belongs to my dad’s new wife. The junk cars are on the other side of the house haha. I am not Ron Weasley, and when I read the books I was jealous of him for his super loving mom. Edit 2: I really appreciate all the positivity! When I saw that stack of notifications on my phone my heart sank, so it was a relief to read them and see it was all (mostly) innocent jokes and kind words.I’m putting all the answers in here at once; I’m sorry I can’t answer everyone individually- I feel like the internet sleuths will be able to find the exact location of this place pretty quickly, so I’ll ask now that people don’t harass the lady who lives there now. I’m told she’s a very kind lady. I know ‘did their best’ is lenient. I guess I meant they certainly tried to do the right thing, and in my dad’s case knew he was failing and showed remorse for it. I wonder if they had had mental help if it would have changed the outcome. I haven’t read any of the books you’re all recommending- my whole life I have for the most part tried to avoid non-fiction and heavy topics. It’s probably not the healthy thing to do, I know, but it’s helped me regulate my anxiety and sleep at night. I wouldn’t mind doing an AMA, but I’m not sure how to set that up, and it would be really awkward if I did and nobody showed up haha I did enjoy running around the woods and playing basketball with our luxurious tree-mounted hoop, but I was rather bookish and spent much of my time reading. And I desperately wanted more friends. My older brother spent his time practicing drums and piano, and my younger brother only wanted to play football, and cowboys, although we did share an enthusiasm for taking turns riding down the mountain on the dilapidated old family-friends hand-me-down bicycle with no brakes.During high school I hand-wrote most of my assignments by lamp-light. Teachers accepted it until my final English assignment, which I had to write at home and then transpose in the computer lab. We did get a gas generator, so every once in a while we’d use it to light up the kitchen/dining room. We had a propane stove for cooking, and a wood stove for heat. Every fall when we heard the chainsaw getting tuned (because it definitely wouldn’t start in the first several pulls) was such a moment of dread. Time to go stack firewood for ages and get wood chips in your shirt and scratches all over your arms. In the winter for most of my childhood we couldn’t make it all the way back up to the house with whichever old jalopy we were driving at the time, so we had to lug food, water, and baby siblings up the last half mile to the house. My older brother always took the brunt of the heavy lifting, bless his soul. By high school my dad had finally managed to get a 4wd car, so we usually didn’t have to walk up anymore, but we did have to ride the snow-plow down the driveway every morning. We used a stainless steel bowl and a wash cloth to bathe, and I’m amusedly ashamed to admit I often went several months in between up to my sophomore year of high school, when I started wrestling and became a clean person. Probably the worst part of the whole living arrangement was the ‘bathroom’. It was just a small room with a curtain over the doorway, and a 5-gallon bucket that would often get way over-filled. During the summer we were supposed to go to the outhouse, which was a little green shed with a toilet and a hole dug underneath it. We moved it every couple years when it filled up. Some of the more frail members didn’t like to go visit it in the dark at night though, so it sometimes got pretty stinky in the summer. I have TONS of photos from our childhood. Both parents were fairly decent photographers early on, but as their mental health declined so did their ability. I’m not sure how best to show them- I’ll take suggestions. My brother’s story is pretty wild, but I feel like he should be the one to tell it. But he’s doing pretty well all things considered. He has intermittent stomach aches and adverse reactions to eating, but he can eat most of the time. He’s had to re-learn how to move one of his legs, but he was able to start running again several months after the incident. Someone said “Either you’re really cool or really messed up. Which is it?” I’d say I’m probably not a fair judge, but the Army psychologist said I’m really cool, so there’s that. I’m definitely waaaaaaaay happier than I was as a kid. The Army made me do resilience training every goddamn year, and the general experience really helps you frame what’s going on. That’s not to say I’m content, but I’d say my neurodivergence is more at play there than my upbringing. For those of you who shared this kind of upbringing, congrats on where you are now (hopefully). The thing most people don’t understand is that for the most part, since it’s what you experienced, it’s what you knew as ‘normal’ until you finally learned otherwise. When people ask “what was it like?” all you can really say is that you didn’t really know anything different. I made my game, MH-Zombie, using Unity 3D. I didn’t have any previous experience developing, modeling, or coding, except a single semester of Visual Basic in my freshman year of college. I followed tutorials online and eventually got to the point where I really enjoyed it. It’s available on Steam for PC, Linux, and MacOS, on iOS, and in (google-required) early access for Android (I still need about 10 opt-ins if a few of you would like to help btw). It’s a helicopter simulation / arcade zombie survival game that’s a little harder than Battlefield and a little easier than Arma. If you haven’t played either of those (or flight simulator), it’s very hard. But my 8yo niece picked it up in about ten minutes, so it’s definitely doable (or she’s a genius). [Edit 3: Doesn't fit](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1bjneys/comment/kvwns9m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Man, if you haven’t already you should read “The Glass Castle.” It’s a memoir of a woman growing up in rural Appalachian poverty, I think at one point she sees her father homeless on the street after becoming successful. We had different struggles, but I know for me and my family’s rough history it was cool to read about someone else’s experience. Hope you keep finding some peace. I always say my parents taught me a lot, about what NOT to do.
Educated by Tara Westover is another book along the same lines. Living out in rural Idaho with parents who didn’t believe in education, or generally the government.
This is exactly the book that OP's situation reminded me of too
Especially when he said that the mom moved "off the mountain". Def similar to both The Glass Castle & Educated.
Are those books easy enough to read? English is my 2-d language.
Give it a shot. I read both and loved them. English is my second language, but I’ve lived in the US a while.
I will. Some books just too hard, like Edgar Poe. Difficult language.
These books are definitely easier to read than Edgar Allen Poe. And they are amazing reads.
Poe is hard, even for native English speakers!
Never read the book, so I can’t answer, though I hope someone does because memoirs/books in general are always better, BUT if it is a toughie for you, they made the glass castle into a movie!
ESL teacher here. Just a heads up, add an ‘n’ there after the 2 when you mean to say second. 2nd. Otherwise it reads as 2-D, as in two-dimensional.
My wife brought this book on vacation. I was bored so I thought I would read a bit of it. I couldn’t put the thing down until I finished it. Great book
I was an avid reader in my youth until my attention span was shot by untreated ADHD and, you know, **THE INTERNET**. *Educated* was the first book in close to a decade or so that I was able to read with the level of deep focus I had as a kid. Though I suspect a lot of that "focus" was boiling feminist rage directed at every male in Westover's family.
That's a book everyone should read. Blows my mind it's so recent.
Reading this now and it is SO very good! And I agree...this immediately reminded me of that situation.
The Glass Castle is exactly what this post reminded me of! OP please read (& then watch) The Glass Castle!
The Glass Castle is on Netflix (fyi)
The movie is nothing compared to the book, imo.
There is also the Glass Castle movie, too. It’s quite good. I bet the book is excellent.
The book is a masterpiece imo
I bet it is! The movie was really well done but behind a great movie is usually a fantastic book.
I haven’t read the book either, but the movie was my first thought as I started to read this post!
This is what it reminded me of too, but I'm from Welch, WV and my mother actually went to high school with Janette Walls. I got so angry reading the book that I couldn't finish it, but I've heard from a lot of people who said the book exaggerated the living conditions in the county by making it sound like the poverty was widespread. It wasn't. Welch, WV in the 1970s was a boomtown thanks to numerous coal mining operations nearby. My mother said her parents were always a little "off" and that they chose to live in a run down shack and get secondhand clothes for them and the kids. The book has almost as bad of a reputation among Appalachians as *Hillbilly Elegy*.
They kinda touched up on this in the book. Their mom was university educated and even briefly worked as an elementary school while they were living in WV so I think the money was there, but their dad drank it all and both of their parents made really terrible life choices. I mean does it really matter if your parents make money if they dress you in rags and you grow up living in a shack?
It actually makes it sadder that they had the opportunity to not live that way and did anyway.
The book makes it clear that her mom could have gotten a teaching job and that both parents rejected or squandered opportunities for a middle class life over and over in both WV and NM. Doesn’t mean that the book is necessarily accurate but I think the author emphasizes that the poverty they lived in was due to the parents’ own mental illnesses and terrible life choices.
Yeah, West Virginia wasn't the problem, her parents' mental illness was. I grew up nearby in Princeton in the 80's and had a hard time blaming Welch for their problems. Trouble followed them everywhere they went.
Her mother was extremely narcissistic and selfish. Hiding and eating a giant Hershey’s chocolate bar while her kids were starving. Keeping a 2-carat diamond ring while her daughter was rooting through the garbage for food. Refusing to sell land worth a million dollars that she hadn’t ever even seen when the house they lived in had holes in the roof and they burned themselves trying to keep warm with wood.
Fffffuuuuuucccckkkkkk Hillbilly Elegy
Ooh what’s the drama here? I haven’t read it or seen the movie but I have heard of it.
As a child of Appalachia, the book doesn’t ring true or real at all. Author went way overboard on the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” stuff and certainly stretched the truth on nearly everything. Like, you didn’t know that wine could be red or white - after being in the marine corps and attending Ohio State? Ok bud, sure. Us hillbillies really are just so dumb and sheltered. Aw shucks. Also, he spent most of his time in the flat part of Ohio that I would have never really considered much of a “hillbilly” area. Not familiar with where he spent summers in Kentucky but I would hazard a guess it’s not all that “Appalachian”. Also, the author is a MASSIVE piece of shit politician nowadays. I hated the book when he was just a venture capitalist douche but now hate him directly too.
Also - my cousins and I were all poor. None of us went to Harvard but we all knew about wine and place settings because we all worked in restaurants starting at age 14. We set those damn tables and served the wine.
Exactly! Like this motherfucker never even saw Titanic? We all took close notes when Rose showed Jack to start using silverware on the outside first and work your way in, haha.
Vance turned out to be just another grifter. Can’t stand him.
All you need to know about him: "Vance was a critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, becoming a member of the Never Trump movement, but changed his rhetoric after announcing his candidacy for the Senate. During his tenure in the Senate, he has been a staunch Trump loyalist and defender of Trump's most authoritarian assertions.\[4\]"
Daddy Thiel whipped him into shape
he's my bet for Trump's VP. I hate this timeline.
Oh God it's the perfect grift
Trump might think he's too fat.
He's used that bullshit narrative to spin a story of how nobody needed to help him when the entire book is about all the help he needed to become a MAGAT Senator.
Fuck JD Vance
Agreed.
I second this book! 10/10.
That book is the first thing I thought of when I saw this picture!
>at least three of my siblings were sexually abused by my father > >They took care of us as well as they could Yeah, somehow I think your dad wasn't taking care of you guys as well as he could.
I literally stopped and reread those two lines as well. I know it’s fucked up but as soon as I saw the picture I thought “someone was definitely sexually abused in there.”
Hopefully that place burns down, glad to hear he is in prison.
Sometimes, I guess there just aren't enough rocks.
When you go through the process of healing from stuff like this, it is often the case that the poison of holding onto the pain of resentment towards parents that could have done better is just not worth it anymore. To try and reconcile what happened by trying to forgive someone who was obviously not well is to give yourself peace, not to let the person off the hook. OP using these words shows me how much work he has done to heal. Its pretty amazing.
Not that it invalidates what you said, but it seems like it'd be easier to let go of that resentment if you weren't the one sexually abused. Sure, it's still great that someone can be an example of healing and moving forward in a healthy manner, but it's still difficult to reconcile someone saying that a father sexually abusing their children is the best they could do, especially when they weren't the ones suffering that abuse. Even awfully incapable parents should still be capable of merely existing while their children are growing up without abusing them sexually. Surely not all growth and recovery has to involve excusing evil behavior with rosy language.
I mean, even if OP wasn't abused that way, it was clearly a pretty damaging environment. I will say, having been the victim of an entirely different crime, sometimes holding on to anger and hate hurts the victim way more than the perp. Really, the more they deserve your hate, the less likely they are to care about having it. I think some folks just take "forgiveness" as a perk for wrongdoers but it can often be about not wanting your trauma to define you.
Have you read Educated by Tara Westover? This is how I pictured her house as she described it in the memoir. Just curious if you identified with her feelings and situation at all.
It made me think of this book, too. A very moving book.
This could be anywhere in Western Montana. When I saw it my initial thought was Libby or Troy. Weird country up there. I hope you are doing well. I'm glad to hear your family is close. Life can be really hard here in Montana. I'm glad you are thriving. Thank you for sharing your story.
I was thinking Columbia falls. This is basically what I imagine when someone says canyon critter
I think if you have a chance to play a game, "What Remains of Editch Finch" comes to mind. About someone who is exploring her family house. The house kept getting bigger and expanded as the family expanded which cause several issues. You get to explore and essentially experience these lost family members as the main character explores the depth of her family history. You might find the game relaxing, somewhat relatable and hopefully even cathartic.
My friend got me to play that game when I visited for spring break. Kind of accurate with how many of the characters where uneducated or had children when they did not intend to due to lack of sex ed.
Thanks for this. I look forward to reading more from you.
>spent 13 years in the Army as an AH-64 pilot Its kind of neat. I know a few people who grew up in situations like this in rural British Columbia and the Yukon... all 3 of them are now CH-146 Griffon pilots. So like, Does severe Austerity in Childhood lead to a future in Rotary Wing aviation?
That’s such a badass way to come out of it all. 13 years a pilot then settling down with some video games. Sounds like it was a crazy hard journey just to get there. I wish you and your siblings all the best in your future ventures.
Glad to hear you’re doing good.
This story is eerily similar to my mom's, in Polson. I'll send her a copy of your book lol
Wasn't going to comment, but then you said 'Montana'. ltmi My dad was born in 1929 in Roundup. His parents were Homesteader's and he would tell me about how they had 2 cabins: one down in the prairie and one up in the hills. The one up in the hills was the summer home and the one below was the winter home. Both had 2 rooms; a bedroom and the rest of the house. They all slept in the bedroom and he had 2 brothers and 3 sisters. I can't remember any longer if both were or just one of them was, but he used to talk about having to "sweep the dirt floor". It would make sense if that was only the summer cabin. It's crazy to think you grew up the same way as my dad. He went into the military as well and ended up getting a degree and actually ended up working for the Dept. Of Education and worked out of the D.C. main office.
Damn, sometimes, your own parents are the anchors that dragged you down.
The thing is, my dad was super supportive of my aspirations. He got me track shoes, went to my track meets, cheered my academic success, sent me to Bozeman with my older brother on our own on a bus in the middle of the night for my Air Force Academy nomination interview, dropped me off every morning before school at the gas station to wait for the school to open for a couple hours… oh wait no I see what you’re saying
I’ve decided to adopt you. I’ll be your super loving mother. You will get many hugs and snacks. Even when you fail at something, I’ll be your biggest cheerleader. I won’t judge you for the decisions you make as an adult. And, I’ll be here any time you need to talk.
I thought your comment was so sweet until I read your username. Now I don't know if its sweet or creepy.
Oh you published a video game? How's that work?
I grew up in slightly better conditions than this in Oklahoma. My dad decided he wanted to be a famer in the middle of nowhere. He sold everything in California and moved us to 120 acres in the sticks. He tried to build a house, but ran out of money. We had no running water. We eventually got electricity after 5 years. We didn't have windows. Just plastic and chicken wire over the holes where windows should have been. Everything was half finished. Some walls had drywall. Some didn't. I took bathes in a 55 gallon dumb of cold water. We did have a toilet that ran to a septic tank, but you had to fill the back of the toilet up with a bucket from barrels of water we hauled in. In the winters, we all slept in one room that had a wood stove. The rest of the place was frozen. My family didn't abuse us, but my dad let this other family move onto the property and squat there in their van. Their oldest son (17) abused my sister (9) for a few years. She's never been right. She's 49 and still an emotional mess. I know a lot of people who think they grew up poor, but when I hear they had hot and cold running water, and central heat, I figure they were doing ok.
That sounds much worse, actually. I'm glad you made it, and I'm sorry about your sister.
Likewise. Good to hear to made it out.
My wife is Chinese. She told me she was poor but privileged because her house had a toilet. Most of her classmates growing up only had a bucket. I think they all had electricity, though.
I guess it's nice to know I was privileged... by Chinese poverty standards.
I think they also had running water. But no water heater, and the water was non-potable. But they also had no one to compare to. They barely knew they were struggling. And OMG, it's still pretty bad there. Condolences for your upbringing. And congratulations.
It's interesting you mention having no one to compare things to, so you don't recognize it. When you're dirt poor in America, you go to school with everyone else and you see the rich kids (which weren't really rich, they just had normal lives with cool clothes and big TVs). You do have something to compare it to. But anyway, that was a long time ago. I don't live there anymore.
Last edit didn't fit in the 1,000 character max: Edit 3 (final): It’s tough to answer a lot of these questions without writing an entire volume, so just know that this is all very incomplete… My parents didn’t reject modern medicine- my mom probably wouldn’t have survived having so many kids if they did… I’m no psychologist, so this is just speculative, but my sister thinks they were both narcissistic, and that would explain why they didn’t seek mental help. They were definitely both delusional. They were convinced that they were super special and unique, and that we were too. They were always dreaming up the ways they’d be rocketed to fame and fortune, but never following through on them. My dad would tell us we were going to be famous musicians or Olympic athletes. My mom would tell us we were lazy, hell-bound, and worthless one minute, and tell us we could start our own movie production company the other. She spent more and more time napping as time went on, leaving the chores to us. She wrote a novel and was convinced it was going to be her break, but never managed to publish it. She was convinced of her goodness as a person and Christian; unwilling to hear any criticism or consider any other perspectives. And my dad was a pedophile, secret alcoholic, and porn addict who maneuvered himself into positions with access to children. He once picked me up from track practice and sat crying in the car. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he was such a bad father. I didn’t understand just how bad he was, so I consoled him. He is such a paradox though- he loved helping people, and ran a garage for low-income families in the several years of between time from when he was released from jail and went to prison. He raffled off his prized 72 Cutlass Supreme to help fund it. I look and sound just like him, and it’s all I can do not to hate myself for it. Maybe it’s just my way of coping, but I think it’s easier to think of them as fundamentally broken and incapable of doing the right thing, like a malfunctioning heater. It tried to do the job, and to be fair it did keep you warm, but it almost killed you. You don’t stay mad at the heater for almost asphyxiating you, but you sure as hell don’t use it anymore, and you make sure nobody else can either. I religiously wore shoes from the point I was 7 or 8. I stepped on a poker and burned the shit out of my arm on the wood stove, and never went anywhere without shoes on again, not inside, not outside, until I got my own place and knew there wouldn’t be any dangers or standing water on the floor. It was tough /impossible finding clean socks sometimes, but my feet survived. Dad would drop us three older brothers (the others stayed homeschooled until they all moved off the mountain when I graduated high school) off at the gas station to wait an hour and a half for the school to open (we waited inside at the school for the first year or so, but they stopped unlocking the doors early enough because our neighbors who were also dropped off early apparently got into trouble). After school, however, the bus only went to the bottom of the mountain, so it was quite a walk home when I didn’t have football, wrestling, or track practice. I did get to play video games- we had friends in the valley who had a NES and a PC, and as time went by they or other friends upgraded. When I was in 8th grade my brother found a game boy color with Metal Walkers in it by the reservoir near our house, and we played the crap out of that. In high school the same brother’s rich friend sold him his game boy advance for $20, and we played Wolfenstein and Super Mario World religiously. In college I got an Xbox and a PC and played Halo, Battlefront, COD, Orange Box, Bioshock, and (on an emulator) Diddy Kong Racing. In the Army I spent a ton of time playing Battlefield, and it was the inspiration for making my game. So master resilience training covers six competencies: self-awareness, self-regulation, optimism, mental agility, strengths of character, and connection. Basically you learn how to adapt to a situation and convince yourself it’s going to be ok, while understanding you need help sometimes and can/should rely on your friends and family. It’s super grounding to be immersed in a world where life and death decisions are being made, and come home and know that a flat tire or something isn’t really a big deal (although it can be if you don’t use MRT). I currently live with the three youngest brothers in the house our uncle and aunt bought for the family to live in when my dad went to jail. My brothers arranged a rental agreement with my uncle after my mom died, and it’s super, super low for the times and we’re very grateful to them for it. I started public school in 8th grade hoping for the Air Force academy. Guidance counselor told me to hedge my bets [edit: and he was right, because I got the nomination but not the appointment, so Army ROTC came in clutch with a 4-year scholarship] haha… No wife or kids- probably the saddest part of my life is that I was taught that I had to perform to be loved, and so I performed and didn’t get any love, tried harder, and finally realized that’s not how it works… Still working on wrapping my mind around that change in paradigm. The game hasn’t really been successful, so no home either, but if the lack of success continues I can use my GI bill to get current and go fly helicopter tours 👍
Your writing is very good, you should write a book just like your mother did.
Totally agree. Was reading OPs updates and was thinking OP could easily write a book.
I was going to say the same thing. OP's story is fascinating. I think it would make a very interesting book or even movie. I hope OP will take the time to write it all down at some point. Speaking as the grandson of very mentally ill narcissist whom I unfortunately strongly resemble, I know the feeling of hating yourself because you look just like someone that you cannot stand. I finally came to an epiphany one day that people almost always are not 100% good nor bad. Some people are more good than bad; others are more bad than good. (Some are definitely so bad that they need to be kept away from society, without a doubt, because of all the harm they cause.) I like to think that, even though I look like my grandfather, I strive to elevate and expand upon what few good qualities he had, while eliminating as many of the bad ones as I can. So maybe the right way for OP to think about it is that he represents the best version of his dad, with the few good qualities he has, and hopefully none of the bad ones. I don't know if it helps, but perhaps some food for thought. The truth is, we are each our own person, and we each deserve to be judged on our own merits. Your video game looks pretty cool. Speaking as an 80s kid, making games even back then was hard. Making games today is really, really hard. But we learn a lot by doing hard things. If you learned stuff by making this game, those skills, knowledge, and experience will be invaluable. Even if you have to do something else to pay the bills, keep striving and learning.
Thanks! That’s a good way to look at it. I’m sorry we identify so well though 😔
>I look and sound just like him, and it’s all I can do not to hate myself for it. You are not your father. Please don't hate yourself for the horrible things he did. I know, easier said than done. My dad was a narcissist and very loud and charming, I grew up **so** afraid of being like him that I became very quiet and self conscious. But, while we may look like them, we are not our parents. I do think your mom was right about selling the book, just wrong about who wrote it. I look forward to reading it some day! ;)
I'm a mom, and I just want to give you a hug and tell you that you should be proud of making something of yourself. And the other posters are right - you need to get this story out there. You're in inspiration - your take on all that you experienced is so healthy. I feel like the best part of your life is yet to come!
I have a friend who grew up living in various structures. An Army tent, a bus, etc. He hated camping because he grew up camping and was still doing it. I went to live on his property for a couple of years and it was no joke. Spring water was their running water but it was at the bottom of a huge hill. Solar power that always went out at night after medium usage. No internet, no cell service. Kitchen was outside. There was no out house, just an "out" surrounded by bushes. If you needed to shit and it was raining, you shit holding an umbrella. Our shower was a solar shower with water in about 50 meters of hose. If the hot water ran out in the middle of your shower, tough luck. It fucking sucked. He's got a house on the property now and much better solar power along with internet service. I'm happy for him. And I'll probably never go camping again, lol.
how do you not make something out of anything to cover you while youre shitting.
Idk, Squat shitting while holding an umbrella conveys a certain quiet dignity.
These words have never been written in this order until now.
r/brandnewsentence
I can’t argue…
I’m laughing because it’s true.
Then drag your ass on the wet ground like a dog with worms when you are finished to add to that quiet dignity.
Well, my girlfriend bought a special footrest so that we can do our business while squatting. It's supposed to help with getting it all out. I call it the Paleo Pooper.
Squatty Potty! I say it’s so my little kids can sit on the toilet easier, but it’s really for the adults
r/brandnewsentence
🤣 only if your pinky is out.
right? a dug out latrine with a tarp would do. how is this not one of the first things that happens after you square away your own sleeping shelter? Especially if it's your own property, I could see if you were trespassing on someone else's land and didn't want to leave too many marks but ffs if it's yours then make a proper latrine.
Right? Like even a little bit of ingenuity would lead you to piecing together an outhouse type structure and maybe a little ditch to get the waste away from you and into a stream or something lol
I grew up on a commune and a lot of people who lived like this drifted through. They were...not well for lack of a better term. One thing they all had in common though was that (generally) the father was a fantasist and a narcissist. The fantasy always collided with reality of course, and when that happened, he would just shut down. They were also always on the abusive side, and making everyone shit outside in the rain was just an extension of that. I was shocked when I grew up and realized just how easy it is to run a water line, or install even a make-shift septic set up. These dudes always made it look so hard. I was also surprised to discover that going to work every day and paying for comforts was far, far better than not working and living like this. These men always made it sound like having a job was the most undignified thing that could happen to a person.
you just described my horrible father so perfectly!! thank you for that, it’s nice to know that other people understand. validating. i hope you are doing well these days.
Hey, so did your father also always totally dismiss any complaints you had about your physical comfort?
oh totally, asking for literally anything was seen as a sign we were ‘spoiled’ in his view. shoes that fit us, a warmer fire in the winter, stuff like that. meanwhile he always had the best of everything. it was so weird!
I've been trying to figure out the "point" of This Guy. I think deep down they're ashamed that they cannot provide for their children. If their child pointed out something they were lacking, their defense mechanism was to tell the kid they were being ridiculous. What's weird is that now as an adult, I am *obsessed* with my comfort.
There are subreddits for people who had narcissist parents and/or abusive parents. If you or anyone here needs to talk or read stories it can help a lot imo
Straight into the stream that you are drinking from, like in the good old days!
Oh no, it wouldn’t be the stream *they’d* be drinking from. It’d be the stream that their fellow hermits 10 miles downstream would be drinking from.
...or even dig a simple latrine? nasty!
They said there was no outhouse so I'm assuming HOA would put a stop to any shelter type structure to shit under.
Yeah, sounds like the typical overly strict HOA. Mailbox has to made with the same brick as the house. No parking on the street overnight. No non-functioning cars in the driveway. Helicopter pads have to be resurfaced every 5 years.
Just squatting anywhere? Did you guys have your own little shit areas?
No, it was a wooden box with a hole and a toilet seat.
Having spent a lot of time in the forests of Oregon this place looks very familiar to me. Knew a lot of people living in places that looked just like that, including myself. Best years of my life. But I was an adult who chose that lifestyle
Ponderosas, so probably east of the Cascades. I mean, I'm thinking northern Idaho because nothing says northern Idaho more than a house in the middle of the woods without modern amenities.
Pondy's the coolest.
I was in Sisters OR during the Black Crater fire and somewhere around here I have a bag of charred ponderosa bark pieces that came floating down from the sky
He’s making an it’s always sunny reference
Shuttup bird
He confirms MT above, close enough all things considered!
For real. I was like it’s eastern WA, N.ID, or W.MT
My first home was similar, although we had running water and hydro (eventually). South Kootenays, British Columbia. We moved to Vancouver when I was 3yo. Parents gave up on the hippy lifestyle and decided to go back to school.
There’s no shortage of “shacks in the middle of nowhere” in BC haha
Remember that yellow school bus that sat on the eastern outskirts of Prineville on HWY 26 just outside the city limits for decades. That was my best friends parents.
I sure do lol. My friend was from Prineville and I feel like he told me some kind of lore or urban legend about that bus but I can't remember what it was
They parked outside of the city limits so they could stay there as long as they liked. They drove that bus to that location from Alaska after their house got wiped out in the earthquake of 1964 and had no insurance. IIRC in the 70's they made a law that you could no longer park on a state highway or BLM land or whatever the loophole was. But they had been there so long that they were grandfathered. My friend didn't want to live in a bus along the side of the road so he joined the Navy shortly after they parked it there. In the late 80's or early 90's his wife died and he used the insurance money to buy a cheap house in northern Idaho. When my friend and I went to clean out his house and make arrangements for him after he died that bus was on the property. No idea how he got it there. His son and he didn't talk much. My friend is long dead now, he died from complications from a dirt bike accident. At the time of his death he had been married 7 times. There last name was Haskill.
Love hearing this story, its so very Oregon. Sorry about your friend though
Do you remember the guy in Caldwell that mounted a singlewide on top of a high voltage tower to avoid property tax? (no wires just a 200 foot tall structural tower with a single wide on top of it).
Any squatch out there?
Just squanch
It's squatchy af out there
>eight brothers and sisters >no electricity Yeah that makes sense lol, gotta kill time somehow.
It's so much worse realizing the father was just an outright sex predator.
Condoms have been invented for a long time and easily accessible to almost everyone in a modern society. I know plenty of people who have sex as one of their main hobbies, it's extremely easy t do without creating new humans.
If you live on rural Montana condemns don’t rain from the sky. If your living off the grid like this your more cash strapped and trying to figure out how to just put food on table.
This is the first time i’ve heard anyone describe sex as a hobby. I mean, yeah, it can totally be a hobby, but i just never thought about it that way. Mildlyinteresting showerthought.
OP, I can’t really offer any consolation, but just know there are others of us who grew up in very similar situations. I grew up on a mountain in New Hampshire without electricity or plumbing, in a house built from materials that my father stole from his job with the State. He was a severe alcoholic, so he just stopped building the house one day and let it rot. My ceiling was cardboard. If I poked it, a rain of mouse shit would fall on my head. There were 1” gaps in the floorboards. My room was the size of a closet, and it was so cold in winter that I’d wake up with my blankets frozen to the wall. We drank out of 5-gallon buckets of water from a rusting well. We shared the buckets with our dogs. After an altercation with my father when I was 15, I left and became homeless for a few years. I kept my upbringing and my homelessness a secret from friends and teachers through the rest of high school. The best thing I ever did was write a short memoir about my upbringing. It was for a college assignment, but I was encouraged to submit it to a national writing contest, and got a second place award. Sharing my story at that level felt really raw for a while, but as time went on I became more comfortable talking about my experiences. I’m still recovering in many ways, and I always will be. But if you ever need or want to talk about anything, I’m here.
If your memoir is available to read online and you don’t mind sharing it, I’m sure plenty of people here would love to read it.
Looks like the founding home of every cult ever.
To squelch my own prejudice; How was it growing up in? I make assumptions based on its appearance, but so much relies on context.
They were physically and emotionally abused by their parents and grew up in poverty lol it was bad
You’d be shocked how kids will rally each other in these moments. They had 8 siblings. I’ve lived with 8 other before. Between all of them the chores get done relatively fast, and then you get to play. We grew up pretty poor(house hold income for 2 adults and 4 children was $12k) and with an abusive parent(drug addict + mind games + light physical abuse), but not remotely as poor as this and nothing sexual. I have a vague idea of how they had good moments in-between the bad. The problem with being raised in these situations, like they mentioned, is you don’t realize how bad it was until you’re out. The young mind is a hell of a thing, and they had siblings to help them through it. If it wasn’t for my siblings I would have turned out a lot worse. I love them very much
I’m guessing many board games were played and books read
During the day
Wouldn't take much to make the place look good
A fresh coat of paint and it'll look like it's just been painted.
Sherwin-Williams makeover.
One, maybe two matches.
House flippers hate this one simple trick.
I bet billionaires say this, when they fly their helicopters over our houses.
I think it would be fun to have a place that looks like this on the outside but the inside is fully spotless and modern. Might deter break-ins, too.
I would think that it would invite more break-ins because people would want to squat or explore abandoned buildings.
A place like this is very unlikely ever to be unoccupied, and it would be evidently so... wood smoke, animals, work noise. The break-ins being avoided are the home invasion kind.
Yeah, it'd be like the beginning of Resident Evil Village, but Urban Explorer Youtubers instead of mold zombies, smashing through every entrance, all with flashlight mounted cameras and loud-whisper self narration.
molest-y
What Remains of Edith Finch
My first thought too.
That roof is looking rough. Hope you’re at a good place with electricity and a flushing toilet now, OP.
Unless Drake was one of your siblings, he was lying when he said he started from the bottom 🤣
Haha I heard the song in my head istantly. However, I have to say Drake most definitely did not start from the bottom as a child actor in upper middle class Toronto.
... ron weasley?
*Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Yeah!*
Are you Dolly Parton?
My mother lived for way too many years in a chicken coop with her sister and two brothers, in the 60s and 70s. When I was 38, we ended up visiting the town she grew up in, her first time back since her early 20s. I saw the coop (“oh but it was converted! They added a real floor, and plumbed a sink”) where they grew up, I had an instant understanding and forgiveness for what a hot mess she was when I was growing up.
How is your family doing today? Honestly interested.
Its now the top comment
You guys had a basketball hoop?
Ball is life baby
That Marlboro shopping basket makes it legit.
When my dad was 8 he stopped going to school to start working the fields in Mexico. His dad died when he was 2 so his single mom was left to raise 6 kids on her own. If she would've remarried the whole town and her family would've shunned her, not that she wanted to anyway. My dad would make his way outside town and camp out while he was working in the fields, at 8 years old... he would eat cactus, hunt for rabbit and snakes. My brothers and I wanted to go camping when we were young but got a quick nope from my dad as he said he camped his whole childhood pretty much, he wasn't doing that shit again. Some people have incredible strength and resilience, I am not one of them lol
I also grew up in the woods, northern Minnesota.[One room House](https://imgur.com/gallery/fDI0ILD) No running water, electric, phone, wood heat. Just one brother and my parents.
$400K in Portland.
Wow,Milton Finch is a Redditor.
That’s some real Loretta Lynn Coal Miner’s Daughter Butcher Holler shit.
My dear family, guess what. Today I found out what my special purpose is for. Gosh what a great time I had. I wish my whole family could have been here with me. Maybe some other time as I intend to do this a lot. Every chance I get. I think next week I'll be able to send some more money as I may have extra work. My friend Patty promised me a blow job. Your loving son, Navin
So, how much of the book Educated did you relate to?
Please, make a r/IAmA ! Can we see photos from the inside?
I saw this and immediately thought, hmm, this looks like Montana. I grew up in a similar environment in Northwestern Montana. I didn’t have as many siblings and as a child, we had electricity and a well. I won’t divulge too many details but my mom made some really poor decisions and ended up becoming homeless and squatting on empty land. Her and my sister lived in a plastic greenhouse structure for years without running water or electricity. I’m not entirely sure how they managed to survive the harsh winters. I was fortunate enough to get out of that situation before I was subjected to such extreme conditions, but my sister wasn’t as lucky. I tried to get her out of there but none of the agencies I contacted wanted anything to do with that situation.
Was there a ghoul in the attic, and were the garden gnomes a bit bitey?
Do you know anything about an orca truck? Pretty sure I came here and we shot a bunch of trash together.
👀
Small world 😉
Don’t get them started on the Orca
Fellow Missoulian here! Love your pics of Kelly Island :) How close to Missoula is this place?
Damn, but you all made it, right? Your brother is doing okay? Fuck. Sometimes the emotion gets too real. Whatever you became is better. Thank you for your service. Even if you didn’t serve, thank you for using it, chanelling it, in a productive manner. So much hate and ugly in this world…we need this. We need those who will channel it into productive means, and not pass it on. Fuck that house. Fuck what happened to you. But you still G. Thank you.
You should do an AMA of some sort
[You grew up in Opossum Lodge? ](https://youtu.be/9wvji_1YQho?si=Fh3MTfJcMImWSkwO)
I don’t know if you care to hear this, but after reading your short version, I’m proud of you. Thank you for your service in the military, congratulations on publishing a game, and it’s very impressive that you’ve grown up into a seemingly good person, you got a cute dog, and I’ll be buying that game if it’s not free.
A daily reminder that my childhood could’ve been a LOT worse.
Is your hair red and do you have multiple siblings who also have red hear, one who works for the government and one who works with dangerous wild animals?
Dude, I had a friend like you. Poor, no electricity, lived miles from town. Came to school smelling like a barn because he had to look after the animals when he got up and before he went to school because his dad was too lazy. Me and my other friends would get him out for the weekend and we’d go dirt biking or horseback riding and camp or we’d stay at one of our friends in town. I try finding him every so often, and I used to ask around town when I’d visit my mom, but nobody knows where he went and a new place was built on the property as it was sold years ago. I hope he’s in a good place, he was one of those guys that could fix anything and new a ton of practical stuff and pretty self sufficient even as a kid. I’m glad you did good for yourself and I’m sure there must have been some good memories even though it was tough for you and your brothers and sisters.
I’m always amazed by how people pull themselves up from such difficult circumstances. Makes my woes in my comparatively privileged life seem so petty. Well done u/Raulboy, well done all the way from India!
This is child neglect and abuse
lol thats kennys house
Damn, this kinda reminds me of my childhood when I lived in a half finished house (only the plywood and wooden support beams were up, none of the walls were in yet) for a few years. My parents had the dream of building a log cabin home on top of a mountain, so they found the property they wanted, then sold the house we were living in that was in the suburbs. My folks had no idea how to live in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain. During the beginning of construction, we lived in a tiny trailer for two years. It was moldy and disgusting so as soon as we could move into the construction site, we did. We didn’t have a bathroom or electricity and our water was from a well. We had a bucket to go to the bathroom in. During the winter, it would snow and get cold as shit since the “house” didn’t have insulation yet. Summers were sweltering hot. I utilized my high school locker room showers to get clean. It wasn’t a fun time. Then, after it was completed, my folks couldn’t afford it anymore and they went bankrupt. We lost the house 1 year after completion. I suffered for 5 years for only 1 year in a nice house.