Who among us wore bread bags on our shoes while growing up?

[jmowreader]

I didn't grow up rich either. No one in St. Maries, Idaho, grew up rich. In my family, we got one pair of shoes at the start of the school year, and we made them last.

But neither I, nor any kid in my school, ran around in the wet and the snow with fucking bread bags on our shoes. Those of us who could afford them had rubber overshoes, and the few kids who came from really poor families...well, that's what the Elks Club is for. (Fortunately for the Elks, they were only buying about five pair a year.)

Joni's "we was po but we was proud" act doesn't resonate.

[dissentient]

1. I grew up poor, not dirt poor, but poor, and I've never heard of this

"bread bags" as shoes, in my life.

[Jamaal510]

162. Ditto. nt

[braddy]

2. Cardboard inside, to cover the holes.

[unrepentant progress]

3. Not *on* our shoes

But as kids we did wear bread bags over our socks inside our boots in the winter, with a rubber band holding it tight around our ankles. Central NY winters used to be very cold and snowy. It was a good way of keeping your feet dry.

[marym625]

7. ha! ya beat me

Just said that same thing

[jmowreader]

9. The thing that concerns me...

Bread bags are very thin. A person would walk right through them.

[KT2000]

15. same here

it was a must when we played in the snow.

[3catwoman3]

17. We did the same thing...

...in Rochester NY.

Does this mean I can run for the Senate?

[MgtPA]

47. We did it too...

... In Auburn NY

[hfojvt]

28. I was gonna say that too

I remember trying it a few times to keep my socks dry. My own idea though, not mom or dad's. Never thought of rubber bands. As I recall the damned things just slid off my foot and were about three steps away from worthless.

We were not really poor though, just cheap. Parents had five kids that they were determined to put through college. So to a certain extent it was save, save, save.

Only to a certain extent though. Mom probably bought us every board game ever made. Plus, we always had a freezer full of ice cream treats in the summer.

[MattBaggins]

48. Must be a NY thing

I did this as well. Bread bags in the shoes

[cilla4progress]

54. That's exactly right.

That's what I remember. I think she "embellished" a bit.

[SummerSnow]

102. Her mom probably put freeze bags on her feet so when she put her feet in her boots it was insulated.

Shes embellishing

[joshcryer]

60. Same.

[Mariana]

62. It made the boots much easier to get on and off, too.

My boots were almost always a little tight.

[BlueState]

93. Yes that's how I remember it.

I grew up in Massachusetts. In the winters we wore these rubber boots, something like British Wellingtons.

They were tight around the feet and you put bread bags on to slide into the boots.

A group of us Massholes of a certain age recently had a debate on Facebook about whether the bread bags were extra protection or just for ease of getting the boots on. I say it was ease of getting the boots on and that was the prevailing thought.

[Mariana]

128. That was certainly our motivation.

I suppose if your boots were leaky, the bag would also keep the feet from getting soaked.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

77. So Like Ernst other lies, and they are doozies, this one was based in some truth

but since she is lying she didnt know where to put the bags, it seems

[we can do it]

96. Same here. I think she's full of shit.

[SummerSnow]

111. If she wore bread bags as shoes on her feet to school, the school officials would have made a trip

to her house for sure. Next she'll say she wore burlap skirts to school

[dembotoz]

142. her skirts were made out of rocks and she was damn happy to have them

[GoCubsGo]

154. I wore them more to get my feet out of my snow boots easier.

The boots kept my feet plenty dry, but they were so snug, they were a pain to take off, and put on, for that matter.

[phylny]

155. Grew up on Long Island, NY

and we did the same thing. Not only did it keep our feet dry, but it was easier to slip our feet into our boots with the bags.

OVER the shoes - you'd slip and slide everywhere.

[marym625]

4. They went inside the shoe

Over the socks. And all the kids in the neighborhood wore them. Upper middle class. Had zero to do with money and everything to do with keeping feet dry in deep snow.

[unrepentant progress]

14. Yep. Except for the doctor's kids.

They were too good for that. They had the fancy ski boots.

[marym625]

25. Well!

Weren't they just the lucky ones?

The doctor's kids were older so I didn't notice. But they probably did have ski boots

[Blue Owl]

5. Mine didn't even match

White on the left, whole wheat on the right...

[dissentient]

13. lol

Almost sounds like a Rodney Dangerfield joke!

[KT2000]

20. hilarious!!!

[grasswire]

58. hahaha!

EXCELLENT

[pinboy3niner]

64. DUzy!

[phylny]

156. Now THAT made me laugh out loud.

I think the rich kids did have ski boots, and the upper-middle class kids had Pepperidge Farm bags. We had Wonder.

[kairos12]

6. After listening to her argle bargle I think she wore that bag on her head too long.

[LiberalFighter]

70. Agreed~!

[Cha]

8. We were poor and 6 kids but my parents managed to shod us with

Buster Browns.

[Dont call me Shirley]

85. Five, all in buster browns too, every august before school started. They lasted all school year.

[we can do it]

97. My parents always made sure we had good shoes. Buster Browns here!

[SummerSnow]

103. We wore Buster Browns too. I remember my teacher told me my daddy is rich if he buys me BB...

hardly rich,dad was working hard.

[we can do it]

108. My dad was a diesel mechanic and brick layer.

[Peregrine Took]

10. I call total BS. I wore plastic bags on the INSIDE of my boots sometimes

If the streets were flooded but no one could see them. I would never ever wear them outside on my shoes - what am I ......a Moran????????

[LiberalFighter]

71. Someone must be a moron.

I'm betting the one that wore the bags on the outside.

[Peacetrain]

110. Thats what we did.. Inside the boots or shoes..

got pretty slippery sometimes, because your feet slip around in your shoes with the bread bags...but the bags did not fall apart.. I am from Iowa.. My husband is from Minnesota...he did the same thing.. bread bags inside our boots.. I for the life of me, do not see how bread bags on the outside of your shoes would have worked, they would have fallen apart..

[LynneSin]

11. We had rubbers or wore hand-me-downs from last year

Never wore bread bags.

I mean unless the shoes were actually falling apart we held on to them. Duct tape could always fix them up.

[2naSalit]

24. She can't be very old...

when I was a poor kid, we wore hand-me-downs from our cousins in another state! And then we'd send them back for the younger kids in their family. We never wore bags because there weren't sealable plastic bags for our bread in stores then, they were wrapped in either cellophane or waxed paper or some of both. In fact I don't remember there being any kind of plastic bags when I was in grade school.

[LynneSin]

29. I would also suspect that a family of farmers would bake their own bread

Wouldn't that be more cost efficient than buying it especially since they are probably growing/raising all the ingredients they need to make their own.

[2naSalit]

34. Agreed.

My mother made all our clothes, grew much of our food in the garden, when we had a place that allowed for that (military, moved a lot) and baked our bread etc. She didn't make our undies, socks or shoes, but she made everything else.

Yeah, sounds like poor little Joni is telling us she walked ten miles to school each day bagged-foot in the snow uphill both ways... But hey, she's really stoked about it and that everybody was wearing bags too, see she believes in equality... but only at the lowest common denominator.

[LiberalFighter]

73. My mother and grandmother did sewing.

But my grandmother I think got a lot of clothes from the traveling salesman.

[LiberalFighter]

69. I don't recall my mom's parents doing anything but baking bread

for a family of 12 kids.

[Munificence]

84. Cost efficient?

A pig farmer knows as much about baking bread as the average citizen.

I do not know of any farmer that can bake bread for less than buying it - from a "personal use" standpoint.

[LeftOfWest]

131. My grandparents raised pigs on their farm

And baked their bread as well, cost much less. They were working poor. It was very cost efficient.

So you are wrong with your broad brush.

Poor people are very motivated to find ways to cut costs anywhere.

Just because you aren't/weren't motivated (read your other posts) doesn't mean that 99% of the poor aren't motivate to find a way to save money.....baking their own bread was one for my Grandparents.

[Munificence]

151. Broad Brush?

There is no reason for me to be motivated to bake bread, I never claimed I was poor. I can buy it for around $1 a loaf all day long.

I would be interested in how many pigs your grandparents raised each year and how much acreage they had.

And about my "motivation"...let's get this straight right now - You do not fucking know me so let's get that shit straight right now.

And since your grandparents were so successful in the riches of pig farming they must of passed down all that wealth to you and didn't stay "poor" for long.

Heck, the money in farming is so ludicrous that I must be missing something and you obviously hold the key.

[LeftOfWest]

152. Calm down.

you are REALLY freaking out over the coverage of this repulsive right wing liar.

FSogol has a link for you...

I don't know you but I read your posts. Says it all.

[Munificence]

157. You know

this coverage itself is repulsive and you are feeding it. And you are saying "settle down", you should take your own advice. $5 says I live on a farm where as you do not and you think you know something about farming.

It's time we stop this stupid ass "here is what I think" bullshit and using it as some type of fact. Just like the link for $460K, her immediate family received less than $45k in assistance. If her uncle got money then big deal, it has nothing to do with her. That's

What I think from what I have seen is that we are scared shitless when all we can talk about are some bread sacks and her family getting less than $30K in farm subsidies over 15 years.

But that is just me. It will make us all look like idiots, same way it made birthers look and the teaparty....we are supposed to be better.

And I will stand up and defend out right lies and dishonest statements against anyone, no matter what side of the isle they are on.

Do you even understand what farm subsidies and conservation monies are about? They are liberal ideas.

[tabasco]

135. Farmers you know are pretty dumb, then. n/t

[LeftOfWest]

145. This. n/t.

[Munificence]

165. So this

means that you think the average citizen is dumb? I mean I equated a pig farmer being able to bake bread just as likely possible as an average citizen. And you know what a pig farmer is pretty much an average citizen. And if you picked 100 pig farmers and 100 citizens and asked "who bakes their own bread" I am pretty sure that the percentages will be close to the same. So with this said, I will say it again:

A pig farmer knows as much about baking bread as the average citizen.

You have equated the average citizen as being "dumb" for some reason. Words have meaning, please understand. One does not simply let words fall from their mouth for them to not have meaning. Now if you are confused by my statement then I will say it again:

A pig farmer knows as much about baking bread as the average citizen.

Now in a different light:

A Pig Farmer knows as much about playing football as the average citizen.

Now that does not look derogatory at all now does it, but some reason when the statement was made earlier you were offended and went on attack. When you were hearing only what you wanted to hear vs listening to what was said. You created an entirely different meaning in your own head. Now I wonder why that is? I'll give ya a guess as I am pretty confident in the "Why".

[xmas74]

164. Baking bread is really easy, with the right recipe.

When I bake my own bread at home (which I always do-I don't buy it) it breaks down to under fifty cents a loaf. That's way cheaper than buying it when bread averages a couple of dollars a loaf.

BTW-I grew up around hog farms. Most of the old housewives I knew baked their own bread.

[ladyVet]

170. Baking bread isn't nuclear science. Anybody can learn how to do it.

Even pig farmers.

Considering even cheap bread is well over $1 here, I can make a loaf for considerably less, about .50 or so. A little flour, salt, baking powder and water, bit of yeast and sugar, and there you are.

[hollowdweller]

88. Too busy feeding and taking care of animals.

[xmas74]

163. I bake my own bread.

With total ingredients it costs about $0.46 a loaf.

I bake it for three reasons:

1) It tastes better.

2) I know what the ingredients are-no heavy preservatives or added sugars.

3) What can I say-I'm cheap.

It's way more cost efficient to bake it, especially if it's a larger family.

[Munificence]

173. No

because there are a lot more chores that need done vs taking 1/2 hour and spending $0.70-$0.80 cents for a loaf of bread that is $1.00 at the store. One is in essence exchanging $0.25 for 1/2 hour of their time. Now you take the price control and government intervention (subsidies) out of the market and you bet I'll bake my own bread as it will easily be $5.00 a loaf at the store. At that point I could probably break even on baking it myself.

Only reason a person can beat the bread price at the store is to value their time at $.50 an hour. Bread is a 1/2 hour proposition so one is saving $0.25 or so by baking their own bread. If you want to count water used, pots, pans used, oven depreciation and really look at the true cost of producing a loaf of bread from your oven then I am sure it would be at least $1.50 per loaf. Toss in an honest "time value" for your labor of baking the bread at even min wage and that bread gets you up to $5.00 or $6.00 per loaf.

That is the way "true cost" are figured, not some la la land where folks think that the sale price is all profit. Seems some think you can bake a loaf of bread for $0.50 or there about - I'd say at the minimum they are missing actual costs and not even realizing there are other costs that they are missing, I'd say that they are missing that number by 25% easily - and that is why they should not be in business. 25% mistakes will leave you with zero profit. industry standard is to shoot for 20-30 gross and hopefully you net 5-10%. That's because most do not understand how to calculate real cost. I could sell 100 pigs for $45k and at the end of the day I might be able to stick 5-10% in my pocket to compensate me for my labor....which would be $2500-$4500 a year and in a good year if nothing goes wrong and it rains then I may be able to get lucky and clear $10K for well over 2500 hours of work which will maybe let me clear $2.50 an hour for my effort.

Then there is this farm that you do not own, but instead the bank does, along with the tractors and equipment, that right there can easily lead to a couple million in loans even before you start farming. Someone has to pay for those loans and by saving $0.25 a loaf on bread you are not gonna make much of a dent in all that financed stuff the bank owns that you reside in and use to try and make your living. Just think how much it costs for that $50K tractor out in the barn that was financed through a bank. Look at all the fuel burned planting and harvesting. Most just see a price of $4.00 a bushel for corn and think it's a lot of money and they do not see the million dollar loans that the farmer is trying to service with nearly all the proceeds from the $4.00 a bushel. And at the end of the day they are the last ones paid and it's usually not much.

We subsidize farmers because they'd simply shut down if we didn't or they'd be gobbled up by these mega corporate farmers that farm thousands of acres (Oh they are getting the bulk of the subsidies by the way). When you are worried about making the loan payments and feeding your family.


The only way to farm and have a million dollars after 5 years is to start with 2 million.

[hfojvt]

37. she was born in 1970

just like my baby sister. Gonna be 45 this year.

I had to read her wiki page. Typical Iowan though - still living in the town where she was born.

Heck, I envy that a little. I tried like heck to stay in my hometown, but no jobs there. I probably should have called up the college.

But like the one comic in Des Moines said "If you didn't make friends with them in junior high, it's too late."

[jmowreader]

44. You had duct tape when you were growing up?

I'm so old they didn't have duct tape in the hardware stores when I was a kid. It was only sold to heating guys.

Duct tape trivia: It was originally called "duck tape" because it was 2" strips of canvas duck fabric rolled up in a coil...without adhesive. It's still available this way. In the Army we called this "engineer tape" because the combat engineers use it.

[LiberalFighter]

72. Rubbers would fit anything but it would be easy to break.

http://gawker.com/if-your-dick-is-smaller-than-a-pop-stars-leg-condoms-f-1678318882

[ND-Dem]

12. breadbags would be useless in snow. too slick and liable to tear.

[yallerdawg]

16. Must be a Northern thang.

Down South we didn't have shoes -- that was poor!

And didn't she mention a school bus? What's that?

[2naSalit]

27. I just watched the first couple minutes of her speech

up until she went through that churchy elation about all the poor kids on the bus and what a joy it was to feel like a share cropper because...

I had to click away.

[LynneSin]

31. As a Yankee I never used breadbags as footwear

And I road the bus to school picking up kids in some rural parts where there were some very low income families and none of them used breadbags on their shoes.

[2naSalit]

38. Indeed

we were in rural New England much of my childhood, nobody wore bags, but then I don't remember there being plastic bags back then either.

[Skittles]

101. I never saw it either

[jmowreader]

95. It's that yellow thing you got on after walking ten miles uphill in the snow

I know..."what's snow?"

[yallerdawg]

109. Hey, I know what snow is.

See it every few years or so. Damn sure don't walk around in it!

With bread bags for rubbers!!!

[progressoid]

18. We did.

It was a thing to do for a while in the late 60s, early 70s. It was usually worn over shoes and under those weird overboots that always leaked.

[LynneSin]

32. But no one actually saw your bread bags

This idiot made it sound like every kid in Iowa walked around with bread bags on their feet.

[yallerdawg]

40. Exactly how I picture it!

I am laughing so hard I am choking!

[progressoid]

52. They often stuck out of the top of the boots

Also, you would see kids putting them on for recess in elementary school. We stopped doing it because it made your feet sweat.

There are a shitload of reasons to mock and despise her. This one is pretty weak sauce.

[BlueJazz]

106. This idiot made it sound like every kid in Iowa walked around with bread bags on their feet.

Damn...that cracked me up !

[Beaverhausen]

50. I sort of remember using them

I think inside the boots and maybe outside the shoes a few times.

[TwilightGardener]

57. Yup. I admit my mom did the bread bag trick over my shoes when

I wanted to go out in the snow but didn't have snow boots handy. But not in public, just for playing in the snow in the yard. Edit to add: Had nothing to do with poverty. I should emphasize that.

[surrealAmerican]

134. ^this.

The bags went between your shoes and your boots, not because you were poor, but because the boots usually leaked.

Children's boots were not well designed for use by actual children back then. Even new boots could not be trusted to keep your feet dry.

[Skittles]

19. I agree

very frugal parents, lived in Wisconsin / Illinois / Minnesota / Iowa, never saw that

[LeftyMom]

21. I remember putting them *inside* our shoes in the snow to waterproof them. But...

I live in an area where it never snows, so being in snow meant we were driving up to our aunt's house in Nevada, and buying boots that almost certainly wouldn't fit by the next time we went to visit would be an enormous waste. A make-do for our usual winter shoes (sneakers) was perfectly reasonable.

Outside of shoes? They'd wear through in minutes of playing, wouldn't they? Maybe bread bags were made better when Joni was a kid...

[Suich]

22. If you were that poor,

you would not be buying bread that came in plastic bags. You would be making your own.

[LynneSin]

33. I wonder where farmers in Iowa would find the ingredients to make bread

It was a rare day that my grandmother would buy bread in her heydays of cooking. They didn't have a big farm but they had a large enough garden that she had enough product to make her own bread most of the year. It was only when they got older that they started buying their own bread.

[Munificence]

74. Really?

So baking bread signifies one is poor but buying it from a store where it comes in a bag should disqualify one as being poor?

Edit to add:

Yes I wore bread bags both over my shoes and in. More "in" my shoes than over as over my shoes happened maybe 3-5 times growing up. I guess there were 6-8 of us local "boys" who'd end up 2 miles away sledding on a farm, those bread bags cancelled out soaking wet feet for about 10-15 minutes - which is a lifetime when you are 10 years old, and well worth the effort to put them on.

[Suich]

75. When I was on Surplus food,

I got 15 pounds of flour a month. I made bread with it.

[Munificence]

79. You should be commended for doing it

but somehow I feel that most are not as motivated as you were/are.

[Suich]

126. I had no choice.

If I didn't bake my own, we didn't eat bread.

[LeftOfWest]

132. You would be wrong about the motivation.

You weren't, fine.

[SummerSnow]

113. thank you

[DawgHouse]

117. It wasn't a "poor" thing. It was recycling.

[TheKentuckian]

123. We were poor but it resulted in no bread making thankfully as my mother was not a baker.

Bread came from the regular grocery store or more often the bakery outlet store.

Hell, even my grandmother seldom made bread and she could bake her ass off and lived through the depression pretty much as an adult beginning to end. In fact, I think she was married before it started. When she did bake a loaf it was about a treat not being cheap. Granted, my grandparents weren't poor but they were generally very thrifty.

In my awareness bread making at home wasn't a thing until the machines got popular and it is still barely one though I think about it sometimes because my tolerance for the cheap crap nears nonexistent and 3 and 5 bucks seems crazy for a loaf of decent stuff.

[Suich]

125. When I was on surplus food in the 60's

and baking my own bread with the 15# of flour I got each month, there was no such thing as bread machines...it would have made my life a lot easier because I sucked at baking!

[TheKentuckian]

166. I didn't say that no one bakes bread ever, I'm saying I don't know all of these poor or any bakers

really.

We got cheap bread from the store on sale or the outlet and were south of the poverty line and doing so was the typical experience not some exception in the 70's and 80's. Of course we had food stamps and didn't depend solely on commodities which included some flour at times (but not every month, it doesn't seem) but not 15lbs but would include pasta and rice. I mostly remember the block American cheese, terrible dry milk, and the worse dry eggs.

I'll also add that the assertion that if someone was really poor they'd be baking their own is somewhere between greatly overstated and a malicious and a TeaPubliKlan style bullshit argument like saying people aren't poor because they have a refrigerator or a TV.

This bread thing is a weird hill to die on here. You can still in 2015 get a crappy loaf for a buck at the regular store, it was affordable even at the most minimal incomes 20, 30, and 40 years ago and I'm not even sure that it is or was particularly cost effective to make it instead.

[rbrnmw]

23. My mamma baked our bread

[1000words]

26. If it's the truth, you are mocking someone who has lived in poverty.

Well done.

[jmowreader]

51. I've known people who lived in poverty who didn't wear bread bags outside their shoes

A pair of old-fashioned galoshes will last three or four kids.

[1000words]

53. Everyone's life experience is the same?

I'm not here to defend Ernst, just pointing out that we are supposed to be the classy, compassionate ones ... particularly when folks of all political stripes have been reduced to desperate measures in order to survive in "the greatest nation in the world."

I will not mock the poor, particularly if all that is to be gained is political points.

[dilby]

30. True story.

I grew up poor and lived in Northern AZ, my mom could not afford snow boots and heard about bread bags, she put them on our feet over our shoes and honest to God sent us to school. Anyways us kids could not walk with the bags on our feet, you know slick bags on ice and shit so we just slid around and soon the bags broke. Anyways a teacher saw the bags so she called my mom and explained the bags went over your socks but under the shoes to keep your feet dry. So next day my mom did that and that's how we rolled for the year of 1987.

[Hekate]

42. Now that makes sense. Kind teacher, by the way. nt

[oberliner]

35. I think she meant socks

We did that - to keep the socks from getting soaked under the shoes/boots.

[jmowreader]

43. We need to go by what she said

She said she wore bread bags over her feet to keep her shoes dry on the way to school.

Oh, and Joni: whoever picked out the makeup you wore for your Big Moment In The Spotlight, you should never allow to do that again. I've seen pictures of her before tonight and she's never looked this bad before.

[Brother Buzz]

36. They hadn't invended bread bags when I was a kid

Our bread was wrapped in wax paper. We simply wore wet shoes in the rainy season.

[Hekate]

39. Rubbah slippahs in da pouring rain

Hawaiian style.

[Ramses]

41. tissue paper

newspaper in a great insulator for a sleeping bag or coat, but tissue paper works really well in boots/shoes. Nowadays, boots are made much better. I have a pair of thinsulate boots recently bought and my feet stay really warm even after several hours in the cold. Im not used to the cold either.

[world wide wally]

45. Did they eat the bread first?

[Quackers]

46. I was born in 82 and I did.

It was over your socks, inside the shoe. We also dried everything by the wood stove.

[RedCappedBandit]

49. I was middle class, wore bags in my shoes to play in the snow

Wasn't because we were poor.. my mom just didn't want my feet to get wet.

[Rex]

55. They didn't make their own bread? Not that poor then.

Buying bread at a store seems kind of a luxury, then again she got her stories confused with people wearing sugar bags and making clothes from them during the Great Depression.

I guess Sarah Palin needed some competition in the Fake History Moment arena.

[Munificence]

89. Seriously? Think of what you are saying.

"They didn't make their own bread? Not that poor then"

Seriously?

Ok it's official one is not poor if you can afford a $1.00 loaf of bread in a bag from a store?

Edit to add: You sure you are not a republican as that sounds like something they would say.

[tabasco]

137. You have already stated that the farmers you know don't know how to make bread cheaper than

buying it in the store.



Your credibility is in the hurt locker, pal.

[Rex]

147. Credibility, wow you are far too generous.

THEN they insult me by pretending a dollar is not a lot of money to a poor person.

[Munificence]

159. .Ok

Then please tell me what you need to bake bread and lets do a cost analysis because obviously you do not know what they are.

You think that bread just magically appears on a table?

So please do tell, hell let's even use a pig farmer. Then need a loaf of bread today, what do they have to do to get it? I can play this game all day long.

[Rex]

146. A dollar is a lot of money to a poor person, I guess you have no idea.

Just what I would expect from someone like you.

[Munificence]

167. You know Rex I am gonna back up a bit here with you

Last edited Thu Jan 22, 2015, 07:25 AM - Edit history (2)

and say that there is some confusion on our parts. My reply (that I said I never made) was suppose to be a response to be above to "Suich" who was post #22 (is below us now) My statement /subject was a direct quote of his/hers and was supposed to be directed at him/her and ended up where it did.

So I take it you should go give "Suich" a bit of what you are trying to give me as my post you are taking out of context was directed at him for making the statement...and it is a direct quote from him.

Now with that said - Guess what, just in 2006 Iowa farmers received: $1,220,000,000 yes that's "billion". And yet some want to make others think that the $2000 (average yearly subsidy/year for 15 years that her immediate family received) is something dramatic and will even make the statements such as "Oh you know her family is benefiting from her" and the only thing I think of in response to this is:

Why in the fuck did she not get them more when there was over a $1.2 billion in subsidies being passed out in the State in 2006? Hell they did not even get a subsidy that year.

I mean this is ridiculous, we all know she is an idiot, but I'd personally appreciate and expect a better effort from even an idiot.....and you think that's special? In 2013 the total farm subsidies passed out = $1.3 billion.

Now that $2000 a year average or so that her immediate family got over 15 years is not that significant now is it? And now maybe you are seeing why I think we should not fight by using the subsidies, the bread bags, or the contracts as ammo....it is a losing proposition and we will look bad by doing it.

Do you realize that from 1995 -2012 that there was just short of $24 billion in subsidies passed out in Iowa to farmers? Do you seriously think that her immediate family that received around $40K through all of that is gonna throw up any type of red flag or is a battle that we really want to fight?

Now when you get pissed and realize how much money that is you need to also consider the price of your food. If the subsidies were removed you'd be paying a lot more for a can of vegetables. And you know I just might bake my own bread if they ever end the subsidies as it would probably cost $5.00 or so for a loaf of bread at the store. Now we don't want that happening to the poor as they are on a "fixed" income. So they can still go out and buy that $1.00 loaf of bread vs a $5.00 loaf and their money goes just a bit further.

Now don't confuse me with promoting this shit, I'm just showing what is there and "why", you can take whatever you want and run with it. Personally I think that we should break up the big farms, the big banks and the "Too Big to Fail 2 political party system" we have going on. But that is just me, a small "wanna be" farmer who gets no subsidies, pays for most everything in cash (no need for banks) and holds my nose when I go to vote. Now as of late I can't help but think that this may just be my last time (Voting straight D ticket) before I cut my loses and switch over to independent. And OPs like this one really do not help in keeping me around this big ol tent but for some those $2000 subsidies and bread sacks are worth fighting over...and as you have probably noted - I am not gonna join that fight.

[ThoughtCriminal]

56. Once while camping.

It was one of those "Seems like a good idea" Boy Scout tricks in the 1960's. Your standard sleeping bag that most kids had were not especially warm, so we would put bread bags over socks to keep our feet warm when camping in cold weather. It sort of worked except all the moisture could not escape the bread bag, so you ended up with soaking wet feet and socks.

[Spirochete]

59. I wore them on my feet

inside my rubber boots, because otherwise, the boots were harder than hell to get off. They might have been a bit too narrow...

[jtuck004]

61. 20 miles, one way to school. And when I got home I had to put it back on the bread.

I would wear it on one foot going there, the other coming back. Walking in the snow both ways. Summer and Winter. (Mom wanted me to be prepared)

Not lucky like some, two whole bags and a bus to ride on.

Late at night I had dreams of becoming a baker, but I lost my soul and wound up working with computers.

[JDPriestly]

63. I've writtent this several times tonight.

When I was in college in a snowy climate, I did not have good shoes. I could not afford them. So I wore plastic sacks (I don't remember whether they were bread bags but something similar) around my feet inside my shoes. I was working, but buying shoes was a bit too much. I often wore cloth tennis shoes in winter. The plastic helped keep my feet dry.

I don't think people should joke about the bread bags. It's really in poor taste and shows a lack of respect for poor people who make the most of what they have.

Joni Ernst may or may not have worn the bags. I really don't think this is what we should focus on. She opposes the Affordable Healthcare Act. That means she opposes a program that helps many, many poor people as well as very sick people. That's what we should be focusing on.

[pnwmom]

82. But she's not saying what you are. She says she and all the other kids wore them outside their shoes

not inside them. Which is very hard to believe.

And the point is this reflects on her credibility. The joke isn't on poor people; it's on her hypocrisy. She pretends to care about poor people, even to have grown up poor, but she doesn't have a smidgeon of real empathy for them, and that's why she can oppose the ACA, wants to privatize Social Security and get rid of other social programs.

[JDPriestly]

150. I don't know why people would wear the sacks outside their shoes since the point in the sacks is

to keep your FEET warm and dry.

But I totally agree about her lack of credibility. I haven't heard of a Republican who wasn't a hypocrite. I don''t see how they can stand themselves.

[pansypoo53219]

65. i remember baggies. not bread bags.

[JDPriestly]

66. I wore plastic bags in my shoes when I was in college. I did not have good shoes. I worked

in college, but shoes were expensive. I often wore tennis shoes -- cloth shoes in the snow, and the bags helped keep my feet dry.

The snow can get really deep in Iowa by the way. It drifts a lot.

[CANDO]

67. My grandmother had us wear them over our socks.

We weren't poor. And funny thing was, my feet still froze because the plastic doesn't breathe and that made my feet sweat which in turn makes for frozen toes!

[DebJ]

68. We did. In a suburb outside of DC.

Lower middle class area.

[pnwmom]

76. Over your shoes? How long would they last walking around in a gritty winter street? n/t

[azmom]

80. Joni must have eaten a lot of

Bread to keep a good supply of bread bags.

[jmowreader]

129. Day-old bread is a common additive to animal feed

Bakery companies put bread in the stores for a certain number of days. After that time, it's sold to farmers.

[DebJ]

100. not long at all.... but it didn't snow often at all, and it got me to school

without ruining my shoes. By the time we came home, the sidewalks had cleared.

Never snowed much there, very few days, and rarely hung around, except for the occasional
monster storm that would close school for days.

Also was really hard to walk in, clearly!

We didn't do this my entire childhood. I remember in 1st and 2nd grades, at a different school, struggling
to get my boots on.

And in some years, a neighbor drove us to school, so we only had to walk half a block to her house.


It was just something we did, probably for some brief period of time when money was much tighter.
I remember it so well though because it was hard to not slip and fall, and the walk was mostly uphill,
for about a mile or so.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

78. While we laugh at this person, let us not forget what her agenda is for YOU

Social Security - screw you, going to give it to Wall Street who will use it in part to fund her campaigns

Medicare - screw you, when you turn 65 if you dont have enough money to buy healthcare then you are a failure in
life and you dont deserve healthcare


Taxes - the wealthy simply have to have ALL of the money, they know what to do with it

so .... can you guss?

yep

SCREW YOU

[azmom]

118. Fuck her and her bread bags.

I think we should start a campaign and send her bread bags.

[wendylaroux]

140. That's right!

screw you,and your little bread bags too!

[liberal N proud]

81. I think it was a Republican thing

It's about as Tru as the "I walked three miles to school... uphill both ways"

I grew up in western Iowa roughly the same time "POOR" Joni and I don't recall ever seeing anyone with bread sacks on their feet or otherwise.

[jmowreader]

99. Hey! I really DID walk uphill both ways to school!

St. Maries is in a valley, with the high school on one side of the river and the town on the other side. You walked uphill to the school in the morning, and uphill to your house at night.

[braddy]

83. Lot's of us did such things, for me it was hand me down shoes that already had holes in the soles.

I used cardboard to try and preserve my socks.

[truebrit71]

86. Didn't everyone?

More republican bootstraps...(minus the mention of the US Govt subsidies her family farm got)...

**** that lying *****

[tularetom]

87. If she was wearing them over her shoes and walked 50 feet over gravel or pavement

The frickin things would have been ripped to shreds and her shoes would get wet anyway.

I call bullshit on the whole thing. Somebody should tell her that the whole born in a log cabin, walked 20 miles to school in the snow, studied by the light from the burning logs in the fireplace thing, no longer is credible.

[DawgHouse]

119. Nah, I walked several blocks in the rain when I was a kid

and the bread bags made it fine. Maybe they were thicker back in the 60's, though.

[pipi_k]

90. Over the shoes

inside the rubber boots.

[azmom]

91. You see people,

"Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have"


While those minorities want all kinds of fancy stuff and then want food stamps, and welfare, and free healthcare.

[WhiteTara]

92. black galoshes that covered our shoes

Ugly as hell, but effective and we saved bread bags for something...heaven knows what, but I remember them stuffed inside one bag...what was that about?

[mainstreetonce]

94. Kids were taught

BY kindergarten teachers to put bags over their shoes inside of boots. This was so they could easily slip on the boots and the teacher didn't have to help.

Bread bags on the outside just wouldn't work.

She heard about bread bags and got the story wrong.

[CincyDem]

107. Definite bread bags in Chicago - but only on the inside to keep our socks dry.

What's this outside chit - just another republican fable.

[Generic Other]

98. In rainy Washington state

all the girls did the bread bag thing. Cover the shoes with wonder bread bags, rubber band it shut and arrive at school with dry feet. Throw away the bags. We would have died before we wore any form of boot other than go-go. Same with rain gear or umbrellas. Lots of PNWs still won't use an umbrella. It's not an income thing. The girls in junior high who wore the bags crossed all economic lines and shared a common trait -- we walked to school. And we weren't getting our groovy shoes wet!

[DawgHouse]

121. I did the same.

[riverbendviewgal]

104. I believe I read she grew up during the Reagan admin?

am I correct.


Has anyone else thought of this... Who was the Republican rebuttal nominee in 2010?

and where is he now?

Virginia Gov. McDonnell gives Republican Party response to State of the Union

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/27/AR2010012704953.html

[Lint Head]

105. My family was so poor we lived in an empty cardboard toilet

paper roll.

[countryjake]

112. I grew up on a farm, too, but there weren't such things as plastic bread bags...

when I was little. This, right here, is what everyone I knew had to wear to protect their shoes:



And they were invariably hand-me-downs from our big brothers, too.

Some of the more well-off girls from in town did wear similar overshoes with fancy fur trim, one button, no big ugly buckles, but us country jakes always enjoyed out-sloshing those types at recess.

Ms. Joni is only forty-four, so I'm guessing things must have drastically changed down-on-the-farm since I was a kid.

[alphafemale]

136. And it was a Hog Farm.

Over boots would have been an absolute necessity to doing day to day work on a freaking, nasty, sloppy-ass hog farm is my way of thinking.

[LynnTTT]

114. Agree , and

the purpose is to keep your feet dry, not to protect the shoes. And you put the bag around your feet, inside the shoe. If her mother put them on outside, she'd have been slip sliding' down the driveway!!
And I really don't know why she tried to hide her feet with those camouflage shoes- her feet look OK to Me .'

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

115. I just got wet feet.

Then you came inside and let your shoes dry out, washing them off first if needed. On the other hand, I wasn't running around in pig manure and blood, just rain and snow and sometimes mud.

[DawgHouse]

116. Yes, I wore them on occasion, over my shoes for rain.

I walked to school. These kept my cheap canvas sneakers from soaking through on rainy mornings. No they did not tear - maybe the plastic was thicker then, I don't know. When I got to school, I threw the bags away. I am not sure but I'm thinking this was on days when the rain was supposed to end by the time we walked home.

Grew up in Little Rock.

[wendylaroux]

120. I did

and my six siblings. Don't think they were all bread bags though.

I guess Joni became a republican to make sure more kids can be bag feet.

[TBF]

122. Our boots came from Kmart -

or the Goodwill. Sometimes hand me downs from other kids in the neighborhood. We weren't rich - or even middle class - but we did have all the necessities. That is because my dad joined the union in his steel factory and made a decent wage. But Joni Ernst isn't going to tell you anything about unions. She'd rather you make $3/hr and wear bags on your feet.

[tularetom]

124. All my shoes were tennis shoes

They wouldn't buy leather shoes because our feet grew so fast. So I never worried about my shoes getting wet, they were just canvas and rubber anyway. I think any kid that wore bread bags or worse yet, galoshes, on their feet, would have been ridiculed. Of course I never lived where there was a lot of snow., but puddles and mud were like magnets for us. I spent a lot of my childhood with wet feet.

[KamaAina]

127. This guy

[TheKentuckian]

130. No, it wasn't much weather to dictate such a thing either though. We get snow but not often a lot

at once. On occasion but not like all winter long would we have a bunch of snow.

Seems I did use them as mittens over cheap gloves when I was little on occasion (and a time or two as an adult trying to augmented some jerseys) but feet or hands in or out it seems like a bad idea for any length of time, the bag won't breathe and you'll end up sweating and make bad worse.

[demosincebirth]

133. I used to put pieces of cardboard in my shoes when the soles whore through.

[notadmblnd]

138. I don't remember wearing bread bags

I do remember the cheap rubber galoshes because I hated them. My mother only let us wear anklet socks (I don't know why she wouldn't buy us knee socks) and the back of the cold rubber would hit your calves and cause a huge red stinging rash. I do remember wearing socks on my hands for mittens though.

[AgingAmerican]

139. We used them when we went sledding or hooky bobbing

Because we would be out for hours and hours and needed our feet dry.

I remember putting them over our shoes too, to run and slide down a snow hill on our feet.

For those not privy to Hooky Bobbing or Bumper Towing or skitching, here is a primer:

Stand near a stop sign when the roads are all compact snow. When a car stops, get behind it sitting on your heels and hold onto the bumper. The car pulls you and you slide on your feet. You hold on as long as possible. If more than one grabs the same bumper, whoever is the last person standing wins. The faster the car went, the funner the ride. The trick is to grab on without the driver noticing. Otherwise they would either a: stop and make you get off, or b: try to shake you by driving crazy, which was hella fun.

My mom used to get pissed, because dress shoes were the best to slide on the road, so we used them to hooky bob. She also hated it because she said it was dangerous.

[LiberalEsto]

141. Only when I walked to school in 1 to 3 feet of snow

which was also the only time girls were allowed to wear pants to school.
We wore pants under our dresses and had to take them off when we took off our coats. Ditto the bread bags.

[libodem]

143. Hell to the yes!!!

Sometimes. Just to stay dry while playing outside. Snowmen rule.

Probably not to school.

[Bettie]

144. We used them inside the shoes

if there were holes or it was wet out. Waterproofing technology wasn't as good then and winter boots were often leaky even new off the shelf. Plus, the bags helped our feet slide in more easily.

When I had the kind of wet weather boots you put your shoes inside, we used a bread bag to help get the shoe in easily.

But, I never heard of wearing them on the outside like they were boots.

[moondust]

148. Overshoes weren't that expensive.

Last edited Thu Jan 22, 2015, 01:06 AM - Edit history (1)

And farm kids always had them because of all the mud and snow and manure in the farmyard including the path from the farm house to the road where the school bus stopped.



EDIT: I didn't listen to her speech last night and just now heard her little pity plug about bread bags. I think it's bullshit. Some kids may have done that on occasion, but I don't buy it that there were "rows and rows" of kids on the school bus regularly wearing bread bags on their feet; overshoes were not expensive.

[Zorra]

149. Bread bags?!? They were lucky!

We had to wear rags on our feet that would freeze to our skin and give us frostbite, which was a blessing, because at least our feet wouldn't be cold anymore after they lost all feeling from being frozen solid. Then we'd go back to our home in a hole in the road...

[CanonRay]

153. No but I did use to wear an onion on my belt

Because it was the fashion at the time. ..

Love that F ugelsang routine.

[Coventina]

158. Originally from "Grandpa" of the Simpsons.

[CanonRay]

169. Thanks, did not know that!

[Coventina]

171. From the episode "Last Exit to Springfield".

My husband is a Simpsons fanatic, so a lot of the knowledge has rubbed off on me.

[ellie]

160. One pair of school shoes

One pair of tennis shoes. Boots for the winter.

She is a fucking lying rebuke, but I repeat myself.

[Champion Jack]

161. We didn't have bread bags....

.... My mom tied dry cleaning bags over our heads and told us we were playing astronaut.

[quaker bill]

168. I do not think we were rich

but we were not poor. I had snap up black goulashes. It would have been fairly dangerous to get your feet wet in winter as I walked to school on any day that the snow was less than 6" deep, and frost bite would have been a concern.

That said I served the poor as a kid (early teens) in a migrant farm worker camp. These people were poor like little I have seen before or since. We brought food, provided free daycare, some recreation and education for the older kids.

While their poverty was grinding beyond belief, they were generally happy folks who worked extremely hard but got by. I would never have called them "proud".

All that aside, there was nothing about their poverty that made them "noble" or "special". Their kids did not get much education because they were migrant, once the crop was picked, the work was gone and they moved on to the next area. They were generally only in one place for 6 or 8 weeks.

There was a lot about ending their poverty that would have made things better.

The fact that people find inventive ways to survive poverty does not mean that keeping people poor is desirable, or that poverty itself "builds character". That is RW Bulls**t.

[ladyVet]

172. Galoshes were too expensive for us.

Six kids and no money for more than one pair of shoes per school year meant no fancy extras. I remember many years going barefoot during the summer to save our shoes for the next school year, because my father couldn't afford to buy all of us new shoes at once. We also got one new outfit to wear, if we were lucky; everything else was stuff from the year before, and the occasional hand-me-down (very rare event!). Most of our relatives were in the same boat, and simply didn't have anything to hand down to us.

At least one year I didn't go to school for days, until my father got paid and could buy me a pair of shoes, and once I went to school with shoes that were falling apart because he was getting paid that day, and he brought me a pair of shoes to change into.

I remember the bread bags inside our shoes when we went outside to play, but not to wear to school. We got shamed enough for being poor without that.

When my boys were younger, though, I would put plastic store bags over their shoes and hands -- often in socks because they didn't have gloves or mittens -- when it would snow so they could play outside without getting too wet and cold. We couldn't afford galoshes or boots, so we made do. But I made sure my boys had decent clothes and were fed, no matter what I had to do without (even when it pissed off the now-thankfully-ex-husband because he did without, too).

A lot of years when free school lunches (no breakfast in those days) was the only big meal we could count on, with cheap sandwich stuff, or stuff like "minute" steaks, maybe some canned beef stew. My mother didn't bake because she was (and is) a lazy person. And a bad cook. We would have been better off if she'd bothered to learn from her mother and cook for us, rather than depending on canned food and the cheapest meat possible.

We got surplus food (which she didn't know how to use) and food stamps. Back then they were coupons that you had to juggle until you could buy your food and only have less than a dollar more on a "stamp".

I know poverty, and was no fun, nothing to be proud of, and certainly nothing anyone should wish on another person. I bake bread (when we have it), cook from scratch, and make plain, good, filling meals because I'm still poor. No matter how hard I've worked, I can't get ahead. And thanks to people like this woman, and her corporate masters, my kids won't be able to, either.

[Butterbean]

174. This whole thread has made me feel much less abnormal.

My mom had us wear bread bags over our socks, under our boots in the winter. I thought we were the only freaks out there that did this.

[bettyellen]

175. inside the shoes or boots, when snow was heavy or they sprang a leak. Yep.

[B Calm]

176. We didn't use them in Illinois. We would have laughed our ass off if we would had seen

someone doing that!

[riversedge]

177. wonder what the brand name was for RED bags that

jodi talked about (? years she was in grade-and or HS). Just curious if anyone knows.


yes, plastic in boots if leaky or prone to get real wet. actually I still do it--on occasion. but plastic bag was over the sock or shoe--then slid into the rubber boot

[Faux pas]

178. LOL

"But neither I, nor any kid in my school, ran around in the wet and the snow with fucking bread bags on our shoes." That's what made me lol.

I was raised in sunny southern Calif, no need for bread bags, cardboard was used when my shoes got holes in the bottom.

BooHoo joni. How come I don't believe a word she said?

[ananda]

179. I never heard of breadbags on shoes before Tuesday.

When I was young, my family was poor/lower middle class -- and
many of my friends and schoolmates were poor. None of us wore
breadbags.

I had rubber boots and galoshes, and so did they.

We all shared through the church and the school. I wore a lot of
hand me downs and had used school books and uniforms.