Lima, Ohio: A portrait of not getting by in the Rust Belt

[Indy Texas]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/where-the-tea-party-rules-20141014

Rather misleading title, since the article itself talks very little about the Tea Party, but has some very sad profiles of small town Ohioans and the bleak, underpaid lives they live.

[Indy Texas]

My only connection to Ohio comes from my paternal grandfather, who hails from the southeastern part of the state. In the '50s, he basically did what dead0man suggested. Having decided that three semesters of college was enough and grown tired of working at the local dynamite factory (yes, dynamite), he moved to Houston and became a bookkeeping clerk for the company that would later become NRG Holdings (and met my grandmother, who was working there as a typist).

It is worth pointing out the caveats of trying this today. My grandfather never completed his degree - which would make him all but unemployable today, except in jobs that aren't worth moving across the country to take. He also had no student loan debt, having attended a public university when they were absurdly cheap.

You can tell someone to move to North Dakota, but the fact is that not everyone is cut out for rig work or "driving truck." And given the way oil prices are going, North Dakota's shale boom will probably turn into a shale bust eventually. And then what? That suggestion is also not very helpful to poor Ohio women who find themselves limited in opportunity. For them, college is more or less the only way out of that life.