FARING WELL
When I graduated from TSCW in August, 1956, equipped with a B.A. in Spanish and sociology, I chose to live in San Antonio. A degree in Social Work was not available back then so the bits I had learned about life had to stem from my sociology classes. I must remind my readers that I am an only child from a small rural area of Texas so my knowledge of "life" was limited to the smidgen I had experienced there and in college. (love the word "smidgen")
I begin this story with that information because I found myself thrown into real life rather quickly and shockingly. I got a job as a caseworker for the State Department of Public Welfare and soon found that my sociology had not covered all the bases of reality. That program is now referred to as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. ("A rose by any other name....") There are still poor, sick and needy and probably the problems are still the same. I shall not dwell on the present.
My job was to visit the homes of those receiving a welfare check, bring their records up to date and see if they were getting what they needed. There was a shortage of caseworkers then and I was handed the chore of visiting 365 families in the San Antonio area who had not been seen in over a year!
I am not going to go into the details of my struggle to understand the situations I saw and the helplessness I felt upon learning how some people had to live. There were some things I was able to do to help them and that was rewarding. Most of the welfare recipients were very welcoming to me and even though I spent most of my time driving around the West side of San Antonio, I never felt afraid and was never threatened. During those days drugs were not prevalent among in the poorer neighborhoods. The dealers had not yet enticed the poor to sell and use drugs.
I was surprised by a lot of things but I found names those people gave their children was one of the most surprising. For example, there was a lady who had given birth to fifteen children and she was tired. She named the fifteenth one "Tragedia", meaning "tragedy" in Spanish. There was another young, uneducated woman who proudly told me that the twins she had since the last time a caseworker visited were named Cy-phil-is and Gon-oria! She thought those were such pretty words.
I met yet another lady who had a little boy named Nosmo. That's not bad but she told me her husband whose surname was King had seen that name right up there on the wall in the waiting room on a sign. It read NO SMOKING!
I met a young man whose mother had gone into early labor and was bleeding profusely. He put her in the car and drove her to the county hospital emergency room but they wouldn't let her in because she had not arrived in an ambulance. He drove around the corner, found a pay phone and called an ambulance whereupon she was taken to the hospital. After he was sure she was safe, he joined the Marines and was sent to boot camp where he asked his buddies to donate blood to the account of that county hospital. They were happy to do so and that amount of blood paid for most of his mother's
hospital bill. He then got a Hardship Discharge and was able to go home and take care of his mother and his siblings. The father had left them before the birth of that last child. I have always imagined that that young man made something of himself.
There are a lot more stories but this is getting long so I'd better stop. I learned a lot during that time, much of which I wish I didn't know.
I begin this story with that information because I found myself thrown into real life rather quickly and shockingly. I got a job as a caseworker for the State Department of Public Welfare and soon found that my sociology had not covered all the bases of reality. That program is now referred to as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. ("A rose by any other name....") There are still poor, sick and needy and probably the problems are still the same. I shall not dwell on the present.
My job was to visit the homes of those receiving a welfare check, bring their records up to date and see if they were getting what they needed. There was a shortage of caseworkers then and I was handed the chore of visiting 365 families in the San Antonio area who had not been seen in over a year!
I am not going to go into the details of my struggle to understand the situations I saw and the helplessness I felt upon learning how some people had to live. There were some things I was able to do to help them and that was rewarding. Most of the welfare recipients were very welcoming to me and even though I spent most of my time driving around the West side of San Antonio, I never felt afraid and was never threatened. During those days drugs were not prevalent among in the poorer neighborhoods. The dealers had not yet enticed the poor to sell and use drugs.
I was surprised by a lot of things but I found names those people gave their children was one of the most surprising. For example, there was a lady who had given birth to fifteen children and she was tired. She named the fifteenth one "Tragedia", meaning "tragedy" in Spanish. There was another young, uneducated woman who proudly told me that the twins she had since the last time a caseworker visited were named Cy-phil-is and Gon-oria! She thought those were such pretty words.
I met yet another lady who had a little boy named Nosmo. That's not bad but she told me her husband whose surname was King had seen that name right up there on the wall in the waiting room on a sign. It read NO SMOKING!
I met a young man whose mother had gone into early labor and was bleeding profusely. He put her in the car and drove her to the county hospital emergency room but they wouldn't let her in because she had not arrived in an ambulance. He drove around the corner, found a pay phone and called an ambulance whereupon she was taken to the hospital. After he was sure she was safe, he joined the Marines and was sent to boot camp where he asked his buddies to donate blood to the account of that county hospital. They were happy to do so and that amount of blood paid for most of his mother's
hospital bill. He then got a Hardship Discharge and was able to go home and take care of his mother and his siblings. The father had left them before the birth of that last child. I have always imagined that that young man made something of himself.
There are a lot more stories but this is getting long so I'd better stop. I learned a lot during that time, much of which I wish I didn't know.
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