Class plays a role in gun control laws that restrict personal freedom for the little guy and in casual enforcement of drunk driving laws. Whatever I have done or will do in this life, I'm working-class Irish American Bill O'Reilly. No one ever told me or my sister that we were pretty far down the social totem pole while we were growing up in 1960s America. We took for granted that it was normal to buy cars only when they were secondhand, that every family clipped coupons to save money, and that luncheon meats were the special of the day. The municipal pool in our town on Long Island, New York, was pretty seedy, and we took the Greyhound bus to Miami for our annual vacation, but since air travel and private pools simply did not exist in our world, we never thought we were missing anything.
Deprivation works both ways, it seems.
I'll never forget my astonishment reading that First Lady Jackie Kennedy learned about Green Stamps from a White House employee. For a time, wealthy Mrs. Kennedy collected the stamps like mad. One of my grandfathers walked a police beat in Brooklyn, the other was a train conductor, my mother's mother was a telephone operator, and my uncle was a fireman. My sister became a nurse. I was expected to become a teacher or, if I got very lucky, a lawyer.