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    Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
    Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
    Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
    Audiobook7 hours

    Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream

    Written by Adam Shepard

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    What can you get with twenty-five dollars and a dream?Adam Shepard graduated from college feeling disillusioned by the apathy around him and was then incensed after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's famous work Nickel and Dimed-a book that gave him a feeling of hopelessness about the working class in America. He set out to disprove Ehrenreich's theory-the notion that those who start at the bottom stay at the bottom-by making something out of nothing to achieve the American Dream.Shepard's plan was simple. With a sleeping bag, the clothes on his back, and $25 in cash, and restricted from using his contacts or college education, he headed out for Charleston, South Carolina, a randomly selected city, with one objective: to work his way out of homelessness and into a life that would give him the opportunity for success. His goal was to have, after one year, $2,500, a working automobile, and a furnished apartment.Scratch Beginnings is the earnest and passionate account of Shepard's struggle to overcome the pressures placed on the homeless. His story will not only inspire listeners, but will also remind them that success can come to anyone who is willing to work hard-and that America is still one of the most hopeful countries in the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 21, 2011
    ISBN9781452675039
    Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
    Author

    Adam Shepard

    Adam Shepard is a graduate of Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, where he served as a residential advisor during his upperclassmen years. He is the author of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, and he lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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    Reviews for Scratch Beginnings

    3.5/5

    79 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This rebuttal to Ehrenreich's "Nickle and Dimed" shows that some people do have the ability to move out of poverty; it takes a plan, perseverance, and the good use of connections.
    • 4/5
      I admire what he did, starting out with a duffel bag and $25 to see how it would be to literally work your way up from the bottom of society. The story itself makes the book worthwhile, yet the writing is just average.
    • 4/5
      This is truely a must read book for highschoolers, college students, and anyone else who thinks they have it rough.
    • 5/5
      The premise sounded really fascinating - a recent college grad leaves everything behind, except for the clothes on his back and $25. He was on a quest for the American Dream, to put it in corny terms, but basically just to prove that good livin' is still possible. His goal was to end the project after a year having a furnished apartment/dwelling, a vehicle, a steady job, and $2,500.

      This was an informal rebuttal against Barbara Ehrenreich's books Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She's totally down on the American Dream. She argues that once you're poor, you stay poor, you can never get your head back above water, your life will progressively go downhill, and you'll be working shit jobs your entire life just to make ends meet. Granted, this is NOT a lie. Some people are like this. It's just really depressing to read Nickel and Dimed as a senior in high school and think, "Shit, I'm going to slave away my entire life and never get anywhere, and never be happy." So in that book, she left her life behind (except for say, her laptop, car I think, credit card, etc) and moved around to different cities to work retail jobs and try to find an apartment and make ends meet. She couldn't do it. She worked at Walmart, complaining for several chapters about this and that, yada yada. It's just a dark read, I felt bad with each page I turned. I haven't read the other book, and I sure as hell won't. Apparently she takes off trying to get a higher-up position in the corporate world, and can't get hired because she's a woman of a certain age. I call bullshit, but that's my opinion. Maybe it's fact, maybe it's a good book. Tell me if you've read it.

      In comparison, Adam Shepard is a hero. Yeah, that's a strong word, and probably a little lame to use in this context. Sure, he took a year off to do a crazy experiment for no real reason. It's not a formal rebuttal against Ehrenreich, and as far as I know he didn't have a book deal or anything ahead of time, kind of sponsoring his project as she did. So he goes off to a randomly selected city using none of his contacts. He stays in a homeless shelter for 70 days, even though he'd gotten a steady job as a mover by that point, and was saving money like nobody's business. By the time he moves out, he's steady enough to stand on his own and not be forced back to the streets. His project lasts only half of the allotted time, because his mother's cancer comes back and he goes home to support her, but even in that short time he had accomplished all his goals. In fact, he had doubled his projected savings. Take THAT, Ehrenreich. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it, if you're driven.

      That's what I take from this book. I'm not going to go out and attempt this project myself, but I loved reading about it. More than that, I love the inspiration it gave me. I come from a similar background to Shepard - supportive parents, never living paycheck to paycheck, having a good college education, pretty much being able to go where I want with what I have. So I shouldn't be complaining at all. A car wreck or hospital stay won't break me. I can lose my job and take time searching for another, because I have savings. But still, reading about his extreme drive was just what I needed to kick my ass. The last chapter of the book was more inspirational than any self-help book I've ever read the back of. And that he's so like me, and from my generation, and has this attitude makes me really optimistic. With his background: family, college education, being an athlete, being attractive, he could pretty much sit around and get stuff shoveled onto his plate for nothing. But he wants to work for his dreams, and that makes me want to work for MY dreams.

      Ok, that was a whole bunch of chicken-soup-for-the-soul crap, but really, READ THIS BOOK if you want to feel hopeful.
    • 3/5
      I really like the message in this book, about achieving the American Dream, but this is not really my style book so I am not able to get in to it and enjoy it. But the book is very well written and gives good advice to anyone who reads it.
    • 3/5
      College-educated, middle class, ablebodied, heterosexual white guy proves to himself that he can start with nothing and end up with something in contemporary America.Which as you may have guessed, does not mean to me that EVERYONE could, or even MOST PEOPLE could.He picks a random city in the south, puts 25$ in his pocket, and decides to challenge himself. In a year, can he have his own place to live, a car, and something like 2K in his bank account. He says he won't rely on his family and other contacts. And he won't use his education to get a job.Except that it's one thing to not put your education on a job application. To go for generally unskilled labor. It's another thing to not actually HAVE the education. He does mention now and then that he realizes it would be much harder if he was a single mother, or this and that. But while he intellectually might understand that, I don't feel that he gets it. I don't think he realizes how privileged he is as this homeless-by-choice man he's made himself into.Still and all, it's an interesting look into the lives and culture of homeless people in the US. (Well, homeless men in this one city in America.) I can't say I didn't learn a few things. I can't say I won't look at the world a little different after having read it.But I don't think anyone should take it as proof that the American Dream is alive and well for everyone. Even if it does work for young, fit white guys. Or at least this one white guy.
    • 3/5
      In spite of the several self-identified flaws in Mr Shepard's social experiment, this is an enjoyable book which affirms that America is still a place where dreams come true and hard work pays off. I sincerely applaud this young man for his adventurous spirit, strong work ethic and willingness to put his own money where his mouth is. That being said, while Scratch is a pleasant read, it is very obviously the product of a young writer who still has not matured past the "I/me/my" stage often inherent with youth. Even during the writer's accounts of other encounters with other people he leaves them barely 2-dimensional characters whose descriptions are based solely on his observations of them or the things he told them. He doesn't appear to do much research or writing about the how his newfound acquaintances interpret their own upward mobility or their feelings about how they arrived at the shelter in the first place. As a mother of a young man in Shepard's age group, I appreciated him taking on this challenge and taking the initiative to write about it. However, as a reader, I didn't really learn anything tangible from this book (other than possibly gaining a greater appreciation for furniture movers). Bottom line: It's a nice story, but it's only an average book.
    • 3/5
      Adam is a young kid right out of college and he dares to see if the American Dream is still attainable. He sets out for a city in which he knows no one with only $25 to his name. He finds a shelter and it is just as awful as he has anticipated. His goal is to acquire a car, a furnished apartment, savings, and a fulltime job before the end of a year. He easily attains his goal. Why was Adam successful when so many others are not? Drive. Optimism. Persistence. And he undoubted obtained knowledge during his college years that helped him in this goal.
    • 4/5
      Fresh out of college, Adam Shepard set out with $25, a sleeping bag, and the clothes on his back to prove that the American Dream is alive and well. Shepard was concerned by the pessimistic attitude of many of his friends – an attitude he thought was fostered by the popular but gloomy Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, both by Barbara Ehrenreich. He wanted to learn for himself whether it is still possible to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.Using the same “undercover” approach as Ehrenreich, Shepard got off the train in Charleston with his meager possessions and a down-and-out cover story that did not involve a college degree. He also had the goal of obtaining a car, a place to live with furniture, $2,500 in savings, and career-advancing opportunities (either through school or business) by the end of one year. Scratch Beginnings chronicles this adventure from Shepard’s first night in a homeless shelter, through job searches, setbacks, conflict, and accomplishment. There is no denying that this is an adventure tale. Yes, Shepherd addresses weighty issues, but he is not a sociologist and his book is not a policy polemic. This is the story of one young man’s year spent building a decent life from scratch. His hands-on approach to experiencing and then explaining things for himself brings to mind bygone explorers or early journalists like Mark Twain.It would be easy to pick on Shepard’s premise and poke holes in his arguments. But Shepard is quick to acknowledge this his is just one man’s story, not a comprehensive analysis of poverty in America. And he admits that his experience was made easier because he was not encumbered by children, addiction, or mental illness. To fault the book for not providing scholarly economic analysis is to intentionally ignore its value and deny its charm.In fact, Shepard’s few attempts to address larger policy issues are the weak spots in the book. The book is not political – Shepard goes out of his way to disavow any particular political affiliation or ideology. But his lack of political clarity shows in the fuzzy thinking apparent in his few policy suggestions. A couple of his ideas – like why raising the minimum wage will not help poor people – show some original thought. But others, such as, “Affordable housing needs additional support from both the legislative and executive branches at the federal and state level” is political pablum, demonstrating neither insight nor innovation.Fortunately, Shepard keeps his policy suggests to a minimum. He concentrates on explaining the personal lessons he learned from finding and keeping a difficult job as a house mover, making the most of difficult living accommodations, and denying himself easy and immediate pleasures in order to save his money and energy for a better future. These lessons range from the amusing (“Broccoli Au Gratin” is the best flavor of Rice-A-Roni and a one dollar box is enough for two meals) to the avuncular:We adjust. That’s what we do. We seize the opportunities that are given to us, and we adjust to make up for what is kept from us. In some cases, . . . we don’t have a choice. We embrace change or we fight it off. In the end, they say, change makes us stronger. Even if we deny the change and retreat back to the norm, the experience has helped us to grow and understand what is on the other side, and it has given us the freedom to make more informed decisions in the future. The appeal of all Shepard’s lessons is that he culled them from his own experience; he did not learn them on a theoretical level from a college seminar or a self-help book, he lived them. He accepted advice from other men at the shelter about how to look for work and get a job. He learned the skills of house moving from the men he worked with. There were times when Shepard’s credulity and open-eyed wonder show him to still be a little wet behind the ears, but that is a big part of the appeal of his book – these life-lessons seem fresh coming from him because they were fresh to him. In the end, Shepard learned from observing the people around him just how difficult life can be, what a difference culture and upbringing can make in a person’s life, and that personal responsibility is the key to achieving goals. As he explained:All the while, we have to be more focused, keeping our eye on what we really want to do with our lives: move up. Or not. We’re either on a mission or keeping our flight grounded. Either way, we are the pilots.Scratch Beginnings is exuberant and refreshing, especially when Shepard sticks with describing his own experiences and impressions. Shepard’s was a brash experiment and its very undertaking proves his premise: the American Dream is still kicking. This review is also posted on my book blog, Rose City Reader.
    • 4/5
      Adam Shepard has written an interesting, engaging tale of his time pursuing the American dream in Charleston, South Carolina. His experiment was to determine whether the American dream was really dead, so he left home with almost nothing, and set out to see if a person can make it on will & optimism alone. What is cool about the book is that Shepard tells it in his own, conversational voice, rather than trying to turn it into a work of grande literature. It works, and illustrates that kind of old-fashioned grit to make it that many of our generation seem to lack.