Q1 Free Response 2

This week I read seventeen pages from the book “I Ain’t Comin’ Back” by Dolphus Weary. The book is a memoir of Mr. Weary’s life growing up in Mendenhall, Mississippi. He grew up in the 1950s and 60s, a time of great racial segregation. Being black and poor, his future did not look very bright, yet his mother wanted each of her seven kids to grow up to get a good education.
Over MEA his year, I have to opportunity to go on a missions trip to Mendenhall. It is one of the areas most devastated by poverty in all of the United States. Because Mr. Weary did choose to go back to his home town after college, there is now a school, church, and a few other buildings started by his organization. When you enter this town you see that on one side of the railroad tracks live the rich white people. These are the homes with lawns, flowers, white picket fences, and there live people with steady jobs. On the other side of the tracks live the poor, African-American people with houses that are falling apart, and money only to buy necessities.
One quote that stood out to me in my reading this week was, “When you grow up like that, you don’t dread not having things- you dream about having them” (2,14). He went on to talk about how for us, everyday we get the choice of what we want to eat for breakfast. Eggs, toast, waffles, honey nut, fruit loops, bacon, banana. Growing up, the thought of even getting to choose between cheerios and honey nut was a dream. He never had a real bath tub with running water, and never used a shower until college. He never had ice cream until he was ten. They did not have the money to own a freezer in their house.
This really made me think of how blessed I am. Not only could I eat ice cream every night if I wanted to, but I also could have the choice of what kind of ice cream I wanted to eat. Looking in my freezer today we have chocolate and vanilla ice cream and frozen yogurt. If my shirt rips, it is okay because I have fifty some others in my closet and dresser. In Edina, most of us are very well off. But there must to be some among us who do live in some sort of poverty, even if they are not as extreme as those of Mr. Weary. What can we do to help these people within our own town and country?