I grew up on one out west. I can't speak for others and I'm on mobile so I apologize for no paragraphs. The place I grew up had cock roaches on the walls, the ceiling and everywhere in between. We didn't have running water or food in the fridge most of the time but I was better fed than the other kids. They called me rich because we sometimes ate food from the supermarket instead of squirrel and rabbit and government cheese. I remember this girl, she didn't have any teeth at 8, her dad knocked them out when he raped her and this was by no means out of the ordinary for day to day life. There were drug dealers everywhere, gangs everywhere, you'd sometimes see dead people being loaded into a pickup truck under a tarp but you didn't want to be caught staring. I remember the tribal police picking people up and going up the road and beating them half to death for any reason they felt like. We were told it was just as bad in the black ghettos and white trailer parks so we didn't think we had it bad. Most of us had Christian names, I remember a few kids going out everyday to hunt to have food and telling me they wish they could go to school because they wanted to learn how to read. There were pot plants taller than any man you'd ever saw, cocaine and weed seemed to be the drugs of choice besides the all and ever present alcohol. Sometimes the government would send people to check on us after reports of what was happening. Us kids never talked or admitted to what happened to us. I remember talking to two people who were nearly in tears trying to get me to admit to being abused, I kept to the story that I fell. Truth was dad came home drunk and stepped on my head and face a few times until my teeth were messed up and my upper lip had been cut in half from my teeth being pushed against his foot. my dad's dad was even worse with him, he made sure I knew that. We all were prideful of how fucked up things were, said we were the toughest people you could find. I got into a fight at school one day, I didn't fight back so dad tied me to a tree for a few hours " until I was mean enough". I like many other kids started hurting animals, the usual things you'd expect from a young sociopath. Eventually most graduated to the gangs or left if they could. Everyone there seemed to have cancer, there was resentment for those who left. We called them apples, it means red on the outside but white inside. I was a light skinned half breed so a lot of people wouldn't even talk to me or let their kids near me. The half black kids were treated even worse, they didn't like blacks at all. Most of us spoke apache, Spanish and English. Most couldn't read. One thing I can say about my dad though, he promised to get us out of that place and he did. If he hadn't I'd probably be in a gang now or dead. I still feel guilt for the ones left behind. I'm 25 now, my teeth are still messed up, my head is still messed up and I still can't eat like a normal person. I'm 6 foot tall and 120 pounds, there were a lot of times growing up that I'd go a week without food and just sleep most days because I was too tired and sore to move, I woke up that way. If not for dad's garden I would have starved. He was gone for work for weeks at a time and mom was a pill addict with gambling issues and maybe crack so she wasn't around either. I don't talk about It or think about It much. When It tell someone about my childhood they give me this indescribable look that makes me sick. Part of me gets jealous when people tell me they had it rough because their parents couldnt afford presents for Christmas growing up, maybe a part of me is proud I survived that or maybe It's misplaced pride and justification for that hell.