We were taught from a young age here to quickly combine a litre of kerosene and some matches for fire !!! This product moves away from the traditional techniques of my people and I am therefore offended !!
It's a fact that if you filter the Dihydrogen Monoxide out of water, it's much safer and healthier to drink.
I can deal with modern youtube idjits ......but........back in the Depression Era...........this is real..... is it survival or something else? i'm leaning towards "survival" but.......... harsh.... This photo was first published in The Vidette-Messenger of Valparaiso, Indiana, August 5th, 1948. It presents four kids sitting on the stairs, with their mother standing behind them. Next to the children is a sign that says "4 children for sale - inquire within". The mother, Lucille Chalifoux, hides her face with shame. Her family was facing an eviction from their apartment. Her husband, Ray, was a coal truck driver, but at the time he was unemployed - so they made the decision to sell their four children. The children were called Lana (upper left), Rae (upper right), Milton (lower left) and Sue Ellen (lower right). They were 6, 5, 4 and 2. However, what we don't see in this photo, is the yet unborn son. After being born and named David he was sold, too. At first their family members thought that Lucille had just staged the photo for money, but she was dead serious. In 1940's and during the World War II food and other supplies were strictly rationed. Even when the war came to an end hundreds of thousands of people were homeless and unemployed, the Chalifoux family among them. Rae and Milton were bought to the Zoeteman family. They were never officially adopted. Later on Rae told her mother sold her for 2 dollars, "so that my mother could have bingo money". Rae and Milton were treated horribly; they were often chained up in a barn and forced to work long hours in the field. And, when she was 17, Rae was kidnapped and raped, which resulted in a pregnancy. She was sent away to a home for pregnant girls, after which she never returned to the Zoetemans. Milton was also beaten and abused, and he reacted to violence with violence, even more so when he grew up. A judge later deemed him a menace to society, and he spent several years in a mental hospital. David (in the middle), who hadn't even born at the time when the famous photo was taken, was legally adopted by Harry and Luella McDaniel. They were strict, but loving and supportive people. David recalled riding out on his bike to see his siblings and untying them in the barn. Only later the fate of other siblings were more or less revealed. In the left picture Rae (right) sits with her sister, Sue Ellen, who had been legitimately adopted by the Johnson family. Lana had died of cancer in 1998. In the right picture Rae presents the same checkered dress she wore the day she was sold. The mother, Lucille, remarried after selling her children. She had four more daughters (whom she kept). Milton and Sue Ellen never managed to forgive their birth mother. "She never did love me, she didn't apologize for selling me. She hated me so much that she didn't care", Milton Chalifoux later said. Sue Ellen was more blunt; "She needs to be in hell burning." Only David (pictured), the youngest of the sold children, wasn't bitter. "She never apologized. Back then, it was survival. Who are we to judge? We're all human beings. We all make mistakes. She could've been thinking about the children. Didn't want them to die." interesting dichotomy - were the children better off being sold (a brutal concept when you think about it.....) or staying at home.......?
Interesting question. We see it almost daily here at work, deciding if removal from the home is more detrimental than leaving the kids with the birth parents. Usually drugs or abuse is involved, but we've had kids taken away from parents who were drug abusers only to have them placed with foster parents who were physically, sexually, or emotionally abusive. I wish someone would have the answer soon.
