An Abe Lincoln story

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Everyone in my circle of forefathers (mine and my friends) seemed to have an Abe Lincoln story... "When I was a kid I WALKED to school five miles each way"... and then the story gets embellished with "in a blizzard" or with "holes in my shoes" , etc, etc.  For many of us baby boomers the essence of tragedy is somehow lost when we say "in my day we had to dial a phone or "I didn't have a cell phone until I was 40 years old."  However, my parents had an Abe Lincoln story, or should I say a "great depression" story... They lived in a flat with no heating system (just a coal stove) and had no kitchen chairs...they sat on milk boxes. Now this was post WWII and to this day, I just can not believe that not one friend nor neighbor nor relative had two spare chairs for them to sit on!  In any event, they worked hard and moved up in the world so that our family of five had a nice apartment with chairs AND with central heat!
I, also, have my own version of an Abe Lincoln story involving my current home and this helps keep my drop in disposable income in perspective.  Many moons ago my husband and I purchased our home from an elderly (near 90) woman.  The house was built by her parents in 1898.
The house was all but condemned and friends commented that we were "out of our minds" but we were ambitious and determined to make it livable.  The main issue with the house, (besides the extreme disrepair) was that it had plaster walls with no insulation in them at all.  The windows were so rickety that the wind blew through them.  The price of oil was skyrocketing at the time and we kept the thermostat at 55 degrees.. That's right folks, 55 degrees and we could not afford to heat our home to even that temperature.  Soooo, we had to sell one of our cars to pay for our oil bill. (The transaction barely covered the cost.)
Today, as I sit comfortably in 72 degrees on one of my thirty some odd chairs that I own, I feel thankful.