I've eaten and stole watermelon from a farmer, he caught us in the act and unloaded two barrels of salt in our direction which led to an early soak in the tub for me and a very unsympathetic "Burns don't it?" from my dad. I got so hungry once and noticed a field of corn just ripe for pickin, went over at O'dark thirty and loaded a gunny sack full, ran home and started a kettle boilin, went to peel the corn and what did I find FIELD CORN.
I worked with the public for nearly 40 years and one thing sticks in my mind "People have money for what they want." The thing that bothers me is that people will stand in line for free food while smoking whatever they choose to smoke, some of the people standing in line are wearing custom nails, streaked hair.
I worked in public transportation, there are only two types of people that utilize public transportation, those that have to and those that want to. The have to's have no other option or obviously they would, those are what we used to refer to as our bread and butter, no matter what they do to the schedule or prices you have them by the short hairs.
People will buy a season lift ticket to go ski, then stand in line for a free turkey for Thanksgiving, I used to have an attitude about people but anymore I think its just the American thing to do. If something is available and you don't take advantage of it there must be something wrong with you. I remember getting out of the Army and promptly getting in a motorcycle wreck, I had limited money and was living in my Mom's basement, struggling with a full leg cast and crutches. Someone said "What about unemployment money?" I didn't know I was eligible for unemployment, I hobbled down, applied and received less than five checks before getting a job. Somebody years later was driving a new Camaro, I said "Where did you get the cash for that?" He said "Haven't you signed up for your G.I. Bill?" I said that I wasn't planning on going to school. He said "You don't have to go to school all you have to do is apply, they send you money and when you flunk out you can change subjects and collect more money, its already paid for this car."
There all kinds of methods to get money or get fed or go to school. A social worker friend of mine told me that very smart people work just as hard as honest hard working people do at "NOT WORKING." Many are criminals that devote their entire lives into doing precisely what they want to do every day of their lives and never turn an honest nickel, they run petty scams from welfare to church donation funds, send their kids out to panhandle all summer and pick them up in their new car. In this part of the country almost of those people are white. I had a girlfriend that was a "welfare queen", three kids by different fathers, going to school on a Pel grant, working nights at a bar, state sponsored day care for the kids, nice house provided by the state, nobody ever went hungry. I would take her out for the night, she would ask to drop by K-Mart and ask for twenty bucks, I'd give her twenty bucks and she would come out in a new outfit looking like a million bucks.
Resiliency is a word that best describes human beings, not just Americans, people are resilient. You have to admire that quality in people. Sure they are greedy, selfish, cruel and inhumane but they will figure out how to get by. There was a Vietnamese saying that basically meant "Get By", with all of the centuries of being under someone else's thumb those people had learned how to "Get By" so much so that they had a common term for it, they would shrug their shoulders and say "Get By".
We will get through this thing, we can all do better.
