Tolkkinen: Let me tell you what it’s like asking for help to buy food

CLITHERALL, MINN. - After my recent column on how conservatives are cutting government food aid, the “Get a job!” crowd came crawling out of the woodwork to berate me.

One called me a communist. (He clearly doesn’t understand communism.) Another argued that feeding people encourages fraud. (There probably is some fraud, which should be prosecuted.) And, of course, news that food assistance is in jeopardy drew its share of comments from proud self-reliant Americans eager to shame anybody who makes “bad choices” in life and ends up on government assistance.

They seem to believe that people taking government assistance do nothing but eat chips and soda all day while watching television.

Well, let me tell you what it’s really like to be on assistance.

Let me tell what it’s like to walk into your county office and ask for help.

You feel ashamed. Beyond shame, you feel like you’re surrounded by funhouse mirrors reflecting images that look like you but aren’t you. You don’t know how to act. Should you mask your discomfort with jokes? Be stoic? You question who the hell you are now that you have become one of those people asking for government help.

Poverty is, partly, a story of where you live.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were always jobs to be found in the Twin Cities suburbs as I worked my way through high school and college. I never thought I’d ask for government help. I was that smug.

It wasn’t until moving to Bemidji in 2005 that I realized not every place has those opportunities. I took education classes there for a semester intending to switch careers, but education wasn’t for me, so I dropped out and looked for a full-time job. I couldn’t find one.

For a while, I wrote news releases for Bemidji State University until that job dried up, then created church newsletters. Neither of these part-time gigs paid much. I got married and we each started a business – my husband doing car repair and me a women’s magazine.

Our income didn’t cover our expenses. We bought day-old bread and canned chicken and ate venison and garden produce. We turned down the thermostat. I wore a winter jacket and hat while working on the computer, and still my hands grew red and stiff with cold. And no, we had no cable TV. We didn’t smoke or do drugs or buy new clothes. We were frugal. Anybody who knows me will vouch for my lifelong frugality; I can see my sister-in-law chuckling now.

For several years, our annual taxable income was less than $10,000. Our dwindling savings kept us scraping along.

We ended up moving to Otter Tail County to farm with my in-laws, hoping we could make more money. At that point, in 2010, even clearing $20,000 a year after expenses seemed like luxury. And our farm was beautiful. Rolling hills, sloughs and gravel roads, a peace I had never known.

Unfortunately, our new home had its own hardships. You don’t make money right away when you farm. You have to wait to sell your crops. And the farm wasn’t big enough to support two families. Meanwhile, we were further removed than ever from jobs. Lacking high-speed internet, I had to drive 35 miles to Fergus Falls to transmit my magazine to the printer. I applied for a job there that promised competitive wages. It proved to be $10 an hour. I didn’t get it.

Luckily, we had a woodstove, so we were at least warm.

It was in Otter Tail County that I finally broke down and applied for food assistance. Imagine that! A college graduate and a magazine publisher needing help to buy food. A farmer needing help to buy food. We were even selling produce and bread at the Battle Lake farmers market, but you can’t live on bread and radishes alone.

We were the able-bodied adults that the “Get a job” crowd likes to shame.

This is hard for me to write, folks.

Trust me that it feels much, much better to give than to receive.

We needed food assistance twice for short periods, once before our son was born and once after. Then, when our son was 2, while my husband farmed and repaired tractors, I was able to land a part-time job in my field. When he was 4, I got full-time work. Health insurance ate up such a huge chunk of my paycheck that we went without for a couple of years, but at least my income paid for groceries.

If you live in the Twin Cities, you might not know that Minnesota has been spending tens of millions of dollars to bring broadband across greater Minnesota. That’s the only reason I’m able to write for the Minnesota Star Tribune, where pay and benefits are better than anything I’ve been able to find out here in the hinterlands.

For years, we have slowly been building up our finances. A sizable tax return from the child tax credit helped us buy two small rental houses in 2019 that will soon start providing us with some additional income. We are secure as one can be in today’s economy, more so than many families.

I stand in solidarity with parents wondering how to feed their young children and with older people on fixed incomes trying to figure out how to fill their cupboards. I stand in solidarity with the able-bodied adults in rural areas, searching for work that will pay the bills.

Congress has abandoned them. President Donald Trump is too preoccupied with building a $300 million ballroom to pay attention.

But I’m here to tell the “Get a job” crowd that they are wrong.

Except for saints, nobody wants to be poor. It’s grueling. Exhausting. Frequently humiliating.