Where Is My America?

It was the frigid winter of 1975, oil prices had skyrocketed, and I had moved back home with my mother, four brothers and two sisters. The house was a modest, four bedroom two story clapboard heated by an oil furnace. In October of that year, Mom assembled a family meeting to ask whether we wanted her to buy groceries or oil for the heater that winter. She wouldn't be able to afford both. Petroleum prices were rising higher than we'd ever seen them, and there was no indication they would go back down. It didn't take long for us to decide that we could keep warm with blankets and space heaters. There were eight of us living in our house and we figured we could sleep together for warmth and comfort.
My father and mother had divorced several years earlier, and Mom was working on the assembly line at General Motors. Even though she was working full time and making union wages of about $10.00 per hour, (roughly equivalent in today's dollars to $25.00 per hour) her salary wasn't enough to pay the mortgage, utilities, food, medical and transportation costs for her family.…