When I was a kid, my family once relied on food stamps to eat.

I didn't know that until I was nearly 40, when my mother, in a rare mood of melancholy, admitted she once did something she never thought she could do.

My father's union was on strike. All I remember from that time is that we ate a lot of cornmeal mush and fried Spam for dinner, and Dad was either out working the picket line or at home yelling at us.

I was the oldest of four, so I usually accompanied Mom to our small-town grocery. I knew she collected S&H Green Stamps, but I never noticed her handing the clerk anything other than cash for our groceries.

"The strike was dragging on, and we were out of money," she told me decades later. "Your father was so afraid, but he couldn't bring himself to apply for food stamps. So I did it."

She took one look at my troubled face and shook her head.

"You gotta allow a man his pride, Connie," she said. "Sometimes that's all he's got."

My mother's words came rushing back recently as I watched the presidential candidates bicker over whether working-class people are bitter, gun-toting Bible thumpers or happy laborers practically pickled in the brine of family values. This sure is a lot of sudden attention for an entire population of people whose legacy of building America usually is forgotten so easily.

In my dad's day, it was a thing of pride to work with your hands. Men lived large through their labor, building cars, tanks, planes and appliances. They made union wages that put food on the table and fueled the dream of college educations for their children. It was the laborer's law of the land: A man ain't a man unless he provides for his family.

These days, for most men like my father, everything has changed except their definition of manhood. Most of the good factory jobs are gone, and pensions and health care left with them. Their wives have to work now, too, just to pay the bills. For so many families, the constant stress of too little is too great.

These are the times when fear masquerades as rage.

The Rev.

Walt Goble said he sees the face of fear in working-class Americans all day long. He is a Methodist minister of two churches in Vinton County, Ohio — population fewer than 14,000 — in the foothills of Appalachia. He also heads the county's food bank, where a steady increase of residents —mostly women — walk through his doors on the fourth Tuesday of each month for free groceries.

"Since the beginning of the year, we've seen a 10 to 15 percent increase each month," he said. Ten percent of the county's residents, most of whom have jobs, now turn to the food bank for help.

The need, though, is closer to 20 percent.

The other 10 percent "just have no way of getting there," he said.

Fear is the prevailing mood.

"They're afraid more businesses will leave the county, taking the jobs with them," Goble said. "They can't afford to travel to another county because of the rising fuel costs. Electric and water bills keep rising, too. Most of our people are holding down two or three jobs to make ends meet. Couples are falling apart over this."

When I asked what the townspeople think of the candidates' speculations about the mood of people such as the residents of Vinton County, the Rev. Goble sighed.

"Well, what I hear most is that they've become so disillusioned with the process that they wish there was a box on the ballot that said 'none of the above.' It's like walking into Baskin-Robbins and finding 31 flavors of vanilla."

He knows that many turn to him for hope, but he also knows it's in short supply these days.

"I try to get them to stop asking 'why' because that's always followed by another 'why,' and that doesn't get you anywhere. I tell them the right question is, 'Who can provide the help?'"

He sighed again. "Is that a valid answer? No. We don't seem to have a lot of help these days."

Like my father, though, most workers in Vinton County refuse to admit they're scared.

Sometimes pride really is all you have left.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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