My father was illiterate, which left him very few options in life after spending his early 20s in prison for check fraud. During the 70s, he discovered he could pick up cardboard and recyclables from local shops and grocery stores and take them to the nearby recycling plant for decent money.
By the early 90s, when I was a young teenager, he would use me as free labor and I'd spend my weekends crushing cans piled as mountains the size of pickup trucks. You'd have to remember to empty the can first, otherwise old beer or worse would get everywhere and you'd go home smelling like a chain-smoking drunk. The only redeeming quality was getting to see all the different brands and can designs and dreaming about how they might taste from their lingering aromas.
We did this work on borrowed land in Tulalip, a local Indian reservation where he had made friends offering pickup recycling services. One early summer after a particularly grueling day, my dad handed me $10 and we made our way over to Tulalip's "Boom City", an open-air market of stalls selling fireworks of every imaginable kind. It was like heaven to me, the air filled with tiny explosions and the smell of spent fireworks while crowds palpable with excitement wandered among the two dozen stalls.
I had my heart set on a brick of Black Cat firecrackers, but my allowance only got me half way there. When the stall owner noticed my dad, he threw me the brick. "Oh, you're Ron's son. Just give me what you have." I couldn't believe my luck. After we got home, I called my best friend to let him know about my bounty and that I was coming over to share. I would never get there.
A few blocks from my destination I came across a yard sale, and as was habit spent a few minutes browsing things I could never afford. Most of it was your usual old housewares and used clothing, but among it all sat an old Apple II with a detached 5.25 drive. I'd only ever used a computer at school, and even then just during free time in the library playing "Oregon Trail" or "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?"
"I'll trade you" came a voice as I gawked mouth-ajar at the computer, and I looked over to find a man pointing at my brick of firecrackers.
When I got home and booted it up, I was greeted with the ">" prompt of Apple DOS 3.3 and no idea what to do next. In my excitement I recalled the seller had told me to type "loderunner", and the rest is history.
It blows my mind that a summer crushing cans, a brick of fireworks, and an old Apple II led me out of poverty. I was so ashamed at what my parents did growing up, but realize now they were doing the best they could under the circumstances. It's so easy to look at someone else and judge them, and assume they're the victim of their own laziness rather than complicated people with complicated histories and complicated situations.
My life wouldn't be the same if my poor, uneducated father hadn't been kind to his customers, a stall owner that was kind to a kid, and someone throwing a yard sale that saw the value of his old stuff in the hands of someone new.