The Hard Times Never Left

Teets supervises a tax service office in a strip shopping center in Cumberland. With her salary, supplemented by Social Security death benefits and child support, she manages to stay above the $18,400 annual poverty level for a family of four.

She and her three younger children live on about $1,600 in a good month. With rent, utilities, car payments and insurance and after-school child care, her monthly bills regularly top $2,000.

Each year, at tax time, she, like many of her clients, receives an earned-income tax credit. That brings her annual income to about $22,000 a year, but it's not enough to close her budget gap.

Because her work is seasonal, she receives no benefits, though her younger children are eligible for a state insurance program for children. When she is laid off during slow months, she collects unemployment. The arrangement works up to a point, allowing her to be home when school is out. But she is well aware that she walks a thin line.

On Easter, her three young daughters are helping in the kitchen of her rented bungalow, with the 5-year-old standing on a chair to reach the sink. Her three grown children are on hand.

There is Tom Spiker, 22, trained as a cable technician. Unable to find work in that field, he pumps gas for minimum wage. There is Matt Kirkpatrick, 20, the father of a 2-year-old girl. He is taking college classes and working at a call center, taking customer-service calls for $7 an hour. Both sons are frustrated about their prospects.

"Living around here," says Matt, "you don't have an example of what you want to be."

An example, though, sits across the living room.

Brenda's oldest child, Krista Spiker, 24, buoyed by scholarships, work-study jobs and her mother's dreams, is earning her second master's degree at Frostburg State University. Later in the summer, after her wedding, she will head to Marquette University in Milwaukee to work on a doctorate in educational policy and leadership.

She believes that her brothers could try harder to find their places in the world. But she acknowledges that they are at a disadvantage compared with people for whom college educations and job opportunities come easier. "We work for everything we have," she says, "but you can only make so much happen on your own."

Krista Spiker will leave Allegany County, where the population is falling and aging.

"It's a giant retirement home," says her brother Tom, angrily. "If you want to retire, come to Cumberland. If you want a good job, go somewhere else."

But Cumberland is where he stays, frustrated and stuck, sitting in his mother's living room.

His mother is working in the kitchen, tired and worried. She has been told that she has a large tumor on her left ovary. As she awaits test results, the tumor haunts her.

She thinks about her first husband's agonizing death to cancer, about her mother's decision to leave, about how those losses shook the family as deeply as the county's economic hardships did.

And she thinks of her children. She has worked hard to make them a place in the world better than hers. But all of it -- the rented bungalow, the full refrigerator, the windows curtained against the rain, her purchase on stability -- is, after generations of hard work, bad luck and resilience, still so very fragile.