I'm one generation away from a sawmill slab and tar paper house with partial dirt floor and an

[bhikkhu]

14. And I was raised in an 800 sf house with 11 people

which I only recently thought back on, as that's the kind of thing we only expect of "immigrants from shithole countries" now. I recall having one set of Sunday clothes, all the rest were hand-me-downs, never more than one pair of shoes, and a mild scolding if I didn't take care of them because they were expensive, and I knew money for new ones didn't grow on trees.

But we were 3 generations from northern European immigrants, with some various mixing with older immigrants. From Norway on my dad's side, which was a "shithole country" when they came over - very hard life for people there, poverty was the basic condition, no electricity or running water most places, poor roads (or no roads) and I can't imagine how rough it was to get through the long winters when small farms and fishing was the basic life.