Found On Facebook

“A Lady asks: “How much do you sell your eggs for?”The old vendor replies “0.50 ¢ an egg, madam” .The Lady says, I’ll take 6 eggs for $2.50 or I’m leaving. The old salesman replies Buy them at the price you want, Madam. This is a good start for me because I haven’t sold a single egg today and I need this to live. She bought her eggs at a bargain price and left with the feeling that she had won. She got into her fancy car and went to a fancy restaurant with her friend. She and her friend ordered what they wanted. They ate a little and left a lot of what they had asked for. So they paid the bill, which was $150. The ladies gave $200 and told the fancy restaurant owner to keep the change as a tip…

This story might seem quite normal to the owner of the fancy restaurant, but very unfair to the egg seller…

The question it raises is:

𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙙𝙤 𝙬𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙬𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙮?

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆?

I once read this somewhere ,that a father used to buy goods from poor people at high prices, even though he didn’t need the things. Sometimes he paid more for them. I was amazed. One day I asked him “why are you doing this dad?” Then my father replied: “It’s charity wrapped in dignity, son.”

I know that most of you will not share this message, but if you are one of the people who have taken the time to read this far…

Then this message of attempted “humanisation” will have gone one step further… in the right direction…”

Going through the posts on my Facebook home page and I found this story. It seems like a good thing to share these days as we head into what looks like the beginning of another depression that will be worse than the one in 1929. My mother lived through that and it colored her life for all times. She constantly referred to the hard times they had with my grandparents losing their farm and raising 12 children through it all.

I had trouble imagining how it would feel until last week when I went to Walmart. It was the first time I have been there for a couple of years and I couldn’t believe the prices. Living in Assisted Living facilities has made me take everything for granted I suppose. Most of my needs are taken care of without my having to go out and shop for anything. But there were a few things I wanted to pick up at Walmart and I had a gift card that would have covered everything on my list a few years ago. This trip though only covered less than half the items on that list. The fabric I once bought for a couple of dollars has tripled and quadrupled in price, groceries are out of sight, making me realize the food they serve here comes at a very great price for this many people.

Still, I bought a package of my favorite Buffalo wings for a midnight snack on the nights I wanted something later. The quality has decreased while the price has increased since I moved into this place. It was good, but still disappointing to get only 2 meals from what used to be enough for a week.

And on this day we remember the twin towers and the beginning of this end to our world as we have known it. The bombing opened up a new era in this country that has been largely unknown to us all. We have been involved in wars for all of our history, with only 27 years total peace in our 253 year history. Sad comment there. Only 27 years of peace in 253 years. But during that time very few of those wars have taken place in this country, giving me a false sense of security. The world is shrinking now and our country is losing ground. We are now a third world country even while trying to act as the world’s most prosperous place. But is there a country that really is prosperous? I am too tired to do the research into that, but in this country the well to do are ruling the lives of us all — or at least trying to. They buy the public offices, own everything we all need and control the prices of it all.

I have heard people blame the farmer for the price of groceries. Having spent 30 years as a farm wife I can tell you the average family farmer has been left out of it all by the corporate farms. Prices are set so the family farmer can no longer afford to raise the same crops we once did. The story I put at the top of this post illustrates this well.

When I was young my mother raised chickens and we always had a cow for milk and the eggs. Mother would save the money she got from selling the excess eggs, butter and cream for our Christmas gifts. We never got much but it was enough. We ate well, since the cow was bred every year and the calf eventually sent to be butchered for our meat. We raised a large garden and mother would can everything she could find for our vegetables during the next year. We kids would pick blackberries, strawberries, apples, peaches and plums for jam, jelly and some to freeze for desserts. Dad also raised a pig for pork meals, and some of the chickens were put in the freezer as well. I would hear kids at school talking about having steak for dinner and wonder what the appeal was. Steak was just another meal for us, as were pork chops, ham, beef roasts and ribs. They have a different meaning for me now since I am no longer on the farm, but in those days and to this day for me, chicken is the meat of choice. The chickens were for best meals, since they were less available. At one time chicken was the least expensive meat, and possibly still is, but for us it was the steak we tired of soonest. I miss those days now, knowing how special a good steak is. At the same time I never order a steak in a restaurant because of the availability when I was young.

None of this is making much sense to me right now. It is late in the evening and I am getting tired, but just felt as if I had to write all of this down while I still think of it. While we were never well off we had more than many of our friends and even our family. None of us realized that at the time. We just knew life was good, we never went to bed hungry, mother made our clothes from the feed sacks the chicken and cow feed that were delivered each month, and since everyone else did the same no one was set up as wealthy back then. Some had more and some had less but we had what was needed in the love of family and the friendships we made in school. With this in mind I am going to attempt to add some photos, and then drift off to sleep.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Back To Highway 81

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fun we had growing up on Highway 81.  I realize when I  refer to it as “Highway 81” I;m giving it an entity all it’s own, but to me it is a place of dreams, young love, first friends, family;  well, a dream that is so real to this day that I would return there in a flash if it could only happen.  No a/c, none of today’s easy living amenities, but some of the happiest memories of my lifetime.

It was out there, on Highway 81 that I learned the necessary tools of my life today.  I wrote my first poem, read my first book, met my first friends and probably the ones who will continue to be my best friends until our deaths.  Many of them are gone on ahead now, but many remain — Diane, Lou, Margaret, Mavis among the first to come to mind.  My date for our eighth grade graduation movie is gone now, but what a life he had!  He was stationed at the Pentagon on 9-11.  When he spoke about that at a class reunion so many years later my blood ran cold again.  I knew someone in New York, mainly the son of a older couple I took  care of here in Owensboro at a critical time of their lives, who worked in Manhattan,  a couple of blocks from the towers, on that day.  He lived across town and didn’t make it to work that morning, but I spent some tense hours with his dad before he got that call thru.  Sorry, thinking about Billy made me think about Bill.

So, big Brother didn’t change much after we moved to the country.  He just had a lot more space to create his mischief, and some older cousins to teach him a few more bad tricks.  Not that he needed lessons on that subject.  He made a “see-saw” across a barbed wire fence for us (I think it’s called a teeter-totter these days), then he held me suspended in the air on it until I fell off, ripping my right arm from the wrist to my shoulder.   Not a deep cut, but I remember holding my arm in the air watching the blood pooling around the ripped flesh as I ran crying to my Mother!  Sometimes I still wonder how she survived our childhood without going completely insane!  She calmly got out her usual first aid tools — the old sheet, the Black Diamond Liniment, and the soapy water to clean the wound.  I still have a scar to this day, but nobody I knew ever went for stitches  back then.  I’m sure the city kids did,  but we were country kids, and my mama didn’t raise no sissies!

Big Brother didn’t stop there though.  He burned our Uncle Joe’s barn down in the process of showing me how our new house was fireproof!  The house was built of cinder blocks — actually fireproof, but when the holes in the blocks are stuffed with hay and a match is held to the hay, inside the hay barn–it just ain’t a pretty picture!  My most vivid memory of the outcome of this however was Uncle Joe, standing among the debris the next morning, shaking his head.  I later learned he only said it saved him the trouble of tearing the barn down later — meaning, of course, after he got his hay out!  He was one really cool uncle!

 Miss Victoria, the next generation!