After reading the stories of Peggy Terry and of her mother, Mary Owsley, I am in awe of Peggy’s life motto. She believes, “I think we were put here to live and be happy and to enjoy everything that’s here”. A life full of suffering leading to this perspective is mindboggling to me. Both Peggy and Mary did not appear to have happy lives yet Peggy is praising enjoyment. All the bad times her mother certainly told her about and that she had to endure actually led to a positive outlook. Maybe when times are so bad you actually see the best in people. Peggy says that people did not hate each other. Nowadays everyone just sees one another as competition. People were not put at fault for being poor as they are today. There was nothing to be ashamed about if you were poor. Mary even revealed that the rich genuinely felt bad for the poor. The extreme suffering actually worked to unite people. I believe that today it would just lead to jealousy and hysteria. Peggy shared, “Here were all these people living in old, rusted-out car bodies. I mean that was their home. There were people living in shacks made of orange crates. One family with a whole lot of kids were living in a piano box. This wasn’t just a little section, this was maybe ten-miles wide and ten-miles long”. She saw this and still associates human life with positivity and happiness. Peggy embodies an American ideal of optimism that I feel is being lost. This country was built on hope, and Americans like Peggy and Mary are proof that the hope lives on.
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