WELFARE: LES MISERABLES

WELFARE: LES MISERABLES

I recently read a blog about welfare queens or at least people milking the system and living off government hand outs.   

There is a family I know that falls into this category.   The mother and father are in their thirties.  The father was overweight and had leg surgery and milked disability for a number of years.  The mother has never worked.  They have a preteen child, and for a number year they were totally supported by the state.   The Father lost his disability and soon after the mother filed for divorce.  After the divorce was granted the family income increased.  They have their house rent paid, fuel paid, draw food stamps, and receives aide for dependent children.  The day after the divorce the father moved back in.  The father worked for a while and within a year was laid off so now draws unemployment.    Recently the mother changed doctors because her doctor would not write her a letter saying she is disabled and unable to work: though she has never worked.  They have two cars and cable TV and pretty much live a life of retirement. 

I am certain that one, if not both of their parents have lived off the system and advise them.    

Having worked for most of my life; just to be able to retire on a fairly meager income, I must admit that this scenario somewhat annoys me.   However, unqualified congress persons drawing six figure salaries, with a six year retirement plans and total health care – trying to defund health care and social programs for the rest of us – bother me more. 

I feel that the bloggers that rave about welfare recipients are somewhat disingenuous.    Many of theses people are living on Social Security and have already drawn far more that they ever paid in.  They get their health care from the VA or Medicare (A few years ago I had a stent placed in an artery – this procedure alone cost many times more than I ever paid into Medicare.)  Many of these people have drawn unemployment –again receiving more than they ever paid in.   They use the interstate highway system, and numerous government programs that protect them and oversee their quality of life.  

We are all feeding on the government tit to some extent.   I am more concerned with the people on the high end that are taking advantage of government programs than I am about people on the lower end.  

There is a human trait that we all possess that urges us to look down on other people.  Without having to defend our own worth we can elevate our position if we decry others. 

the Ol’Buzzard

BLOGGER QUESTION

Does anyone know how to delete a blog from your reading list?
the Ol'Buzzard

A BUZZARD EGG OMELET #23

For years I use to fight with the stem end of the banana.  I would twist it, bite it, cut it and maul it just to get it open. 

Some time ago I was watching a nature video and a monkey picked up a banana tweaked the bottom end and unzipped it a matter of seconds.  It was just that easy.

All these years I have opened bananas from the stem end and it has taken a monkey to show me the easy way. 

the Ol’Buzzard

MAINE’S GOVERNOR CALLS THE PRESIDENT A RACIST

I have often said on this blog that people deserve the government they get, because they voted in the asshole politicians that are deciding their future. 

In retrospect, I couldn't be more wrong.   Sometimes, the process of elections favors one unacceptable candidate over other  more qualified.  

This is the case with Maine’s governor Paul Le Page.  

In Maine’s last election there were two very qualified candidates running: one running on the Democratic ticket and one on the Independent.   Then there was Paul Le Page, a loud, obnoxious, successful but not to bright business man, running as a Republican.

Unfortunately the Democratic voters split their vote between their party and the Independent; and the ‘Working Men Vote Republican’ idiots, the Chamber of Commerce and the easily enraged Tea Party elected Paul Le Page. 

PEP'E Le Page has an approval rating of 39% across the state – the 39% that elected him.   Meanwhile, the upcoming elections could be a replay of the same debacle.  The same independent that ran last election has declared his intention to run again.  He is by far the most qualified, but I am afraid the Democrats that always vote a straight ticket (which last election included my wife and I) and Democrats that vote their conscience will again split their vote.    

There is a danger that we could be in for another four years of PEP'E La Page.  

I apologies for the State of Maine
the Ol'Buzzard

SEX FOR SALE

The Chicken Ranch: Best Little Whore House in Texas

There was recently a massage therapist arrested in Portland (Maine) for prostitution.  She has be fined and sentenced to ten months in jail.  Sixty men have been charged with soliciting sex from the ‘Portland Madam.’   Some have plead guilty and others ‘no contest.’   Their names have been made a part of public record and they are being fined. 

There is something about this that slams contrary to the libertarian strain in me (and yes we all have a libertarian strain to some extent – affronts to personal liberties.)

If this woman chooses to engage in sex for profit and these men choose to avail themselves – it would seem to me to be a victimless crime – and should not be a crime. 

Sex trafficking in this country is a deplorable reality.   Drug addicted street hookers – purveyors of sexually transmitted diseases – manipulated by street hoods – pimps – patrol the streets at night.    This is a criminal activity that creates victims and cost society. 

The obvious answer is regulation.   This could be a regulated service industry with licensed service providers.   It could create a tax base, decrease prison populations and bring an end to a criminal enterprise as it now exists.

There is no logical argument against legalized prostitution.  Our sexual needs are natural – not disgusting.    Objections are solely base on religious moral grounds – those people who feel so pious that they must legislate the morality of the rest of us.  Any freedom can be abused by an individual; but with controls this service could fulfill a need.  I have no doubt that pent up sexual frustration leads to depression, suicide, crime, violence and child abuse. 

Christian fear of sex and its outward disgust for the female human body has conditioned us to a knee-jerk condemnation of the natural urges of human sexuality

 Men and women, who for any reason are void of a relationship, should be able to benefit from men or women who are willing to provide sexual intimacy.   

So says

the Ol'Buzzard

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REMINISCENCE – TRANSITION TO THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

At age eight, just before starting the second grade, my grandmother moved us from Kentucky to her ancestral home in the Mississippi Delta.  

Just so you know - an eight year old is capable of experiencing cultural shock. 

Kentucky was all I knew.   My grandfather’s people were rooted into the history of Crittenden County Kentucky all the way back to the Civil War.  Family ties extended across the county - people knew me there and I was accepted. 

My grandfather had worked for the Illinois Central Railroad until retirement.  My grandmother and grandfather were divorced, but my grandmother has a pass to ride the trains.   We rode an old steam engine passenger train from Paducah, Kentucky to Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

Rolling Fork is located in the center of Sharkey County, which is located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.  The land is flat and hot – cotton country.   The black people greatly outnumbered the white people in the county, but this was segregation and black people didn't count. 

It is funny when you think about it:  in the late 1940’s black people in Rolling Fork were considered inferior – just above field animals.   Now, in the twenty-first century, the only thing Rolling Fork is known for is as the home of McKinley Morganfield: Muddy Waters.

The house we moved into was one side of a duplex; then known as a shotgun house because you could shoot a shotgun through the front door and it would exit through the backdoor – the hall went down the center of the house from front door to back.   The house was built off the ground on brick pilings, as were most of the older houses because, before the Corps of Engineers built levies, yearly flooding of the Mississippi river was once common in the area. We had three rooms: two bedrooms and a kitchen.  

We shared the house with an older couple – the owners.  There was a screened porch across the front of the house furnished with some wicker rocking chairs and a swing.   During the summer, because of the heat, my grandmother and I and the old couple would sit on the porch at night until bed time.  I would often fall asleep in the swing.   There were screens on the windows and at night we slept with the windows open and an oscillating fan blowing air across the bed.   I can remember many nights trying to get to sleep, sweating – with the sheet pulled over my head, as mosquitoes buzzed over the bed.

My entrance into school was not pleasant.  I was from Kentucky and so the students decided I was a Yankee.   The Civil War was the proud culture of the area.    ‘The 4^th of July’ was not celebrated because that was the date that Vicksburg fell to ‘Grants army of northern aggression.’ 

Mississippi State Flag

We had a telephone.  This was before dial phones.  Our telephone number was 26.   My grandmother’s brother’s telephone number was 3.   Numbers really didn't matter, because you could pick up the phone and tell the operator you wanted Claude Kelly’s telephone and she would ring it.   The operators knew everybody in town, and it wasn't unusual for an operator to tell you that the person you were calling had gone to Vicksburg and wouldn't be home for a couple of days. 

Note: I could not find a picture of a telephone on Google without the dial on it.   Our phone was black with just a small white placard in the center of the receiver that had our telephone number printed on it. 

School ran from 7:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon.  There were no spring or fall breaks – straight through until Christmas and then straight through until summer; I believe we did get Thanksgiving off.  

Just before moving to Mississippi my sister/mother gave me a J.C. Higgins, 26 inch, red and white bicycle.  

I rode this bicycle to school and back until I entered the eleventh grade.    In the early days the bicycle was my get away vehicle after school.   My bicycle was named Fury for the horse of Straight Arrow – my comic book and radio hero.

The high point of each day began after school at 5 p.m. when I would sit on the floor at home, in front of the large Philco radio, with a mayonnaise sandwich and a glass of milk, and tune into one hour of kids programming. 

For those of you that can’t imagine a time before television - radio was just as exciting – and perhaps more so than TV.    Kids today watch television along with distractions; but radio took your full concentration.   Somehow you became more a part of the program than you can with television.  

The afternoon programming could be Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and his wonder dog King; The Lone Ranger and Tonto; Tarzan; Roy Rogers; Rex the wonder dog; Lassie – or others.   Saturday mornings were also kid’s time: I listened to Sky King; Flash Gordon and Space Cadets.  

My favorite Saturday radio show was Straight Arrow.  

In a moment Steve Adams rancher is gone - and in his place
Yes Fury it is I Straight Arrow.

The mild rancher Steve Adams would be confronted by evil doers then ride his horse across the badlands and jump it across a canyon into a secret cave– there he would change into his Indian outfit and emerge as Straight Arrow riding his golden horse Fury.    With his bow and arrow he would defeat the villains and then return to his persona as the mild rancher. 

 

Nabisco shredded wheat included Straight Arrow Indian craft cards with its cereal.  These cards were magical: they showed you how to build tepees  identify animal tracks and make all sorts of Indian paraphernalia.   I hated shredded wheat but ate it to get the cards.

I spent hours making war shields, tomahawks, spears, bow and arrows, and building shelters.   When away from school I spent much of my time occupying some elaborate fantasy

My toys were simple by today’s standards.  Along with my Indian outfit that I made, my other prize possessions (other than Fury) were two cap pistols and a cigar box of toy plastic soldiers.   The soldiers entertained me for hours on rainy days in the house. 

Now that I think about it, guns (toys or otherwise) have been a part of my life almost as far back as I can remember.  

Kids today can not fathom life without electronics.   If they aren't in front of a television or their computer then they are on their cell phones or being entertained with some organized activity – otherwise they are bored. 

I also had electronics when I was a kid: I owned a flashlight.

On Saturdays my grandmother would give me a quarter and I would go to the movies.    It cost a dime to get in – popcorn was a dime and a coke was a nickel.    There was usually a western double feature showing on Saturdays.   Black people could go to the movie but had to sit in the balcony – they had no concession stand.  

The town was a safe place to live and since we lived three blocks from the movie theater my grandmother would sometimes let me go to movies at night.  They always showed the horror movies at night.  They scared the hell out of me but I loved them.  I remember hiding under the seats during the scary parts; and after the movie I would run home through the dark streets so fast I don’t think my feet touched the ground.  

 

When I was ten years old I got a Daisy air rifle for Christmas.  Like the boy in A Christmas Story, I slept with the BB gun beside my bed.   It was the greatest gift I ever received. 

BB’s were ten cents a tube.  I don’t remember how many BB’s were in a tube but there must have been at least a hundred.  You would twist the cap on the end of the barrel and pour the BB down the loading chute.  I must have shot thousands of rounds over a four year period.  

When I was fourteen I helped an uncle pack a van with his household furniture when he moved his family to New Orleans.  Just before he left he gave me a bolt action 22 cal. rifle (which I still have.)    I am not sure what happened to the BB gun; perhaps it got passed down to a cousin. 

That gift pretty much ended my childhood.  

REMINISCENCE

After retiring from the military my wife and I attended college together – this was early 1980’s.   As part of a living history class we were required to interview and audio tape two people over seventy years old, collecting their reminiscence of their early days.  Tapes from this class were to become part of an oral history collection at the college. 

Thinking about this class I realize that I am now old enough to have been included in this collection. 

This has me thinking about the changes I have seen during my lifetime.  

My earliest memories are of a small town in western Kentucky where I lived with my grandmother (who I thought was my mother) until age eight when we moved to the Delta of Mississippi, which was my grandmother’s home. 

 Those Kentucky memories are sparse; but, I do remember that behind our house was a coal shed and my grandmother would bring in a scuttle of coal to feed into the fireplace on cold days.  I can remember when I started school, standing in front of the coal fire as my grandmother dressed me. 

The early 1940’s was war time and people hung small flags in their windows with stars for each son serving in the military.   My grandmother had a flag with two stars on it, for her son in the Army and her daughter (my mother) in the Waves (as women in the Navy were called back then.)

I have covered this before:  My grandmother raised me.  She did not like my birth name or my birth date so she changed both of them.  I was raised thinking my grandmother’s children were my sisters (including my mother) and brothers.  I did not find out about any of this until I tried to apply for a birth certificate to join the military.   

 I can remember going with my aunt/sister Odessa to the movie house in the town.  The show began with a cartoon, there was a news clips about the war, ending with the warning that there could be spies among us and that loose lips sank ships.  The movie was a Crosby and Hope road movie.

There was a western movie my aunt took me to see, and during the intermission the western actor (can’t remember his name) and his sidekick Al ‘Fuzzy’ St John came out on the stage for a live performance.   The cowboy did fast draws and rope tricks and Fuzzy did pratfalls.   I got their autographs on a popcorn box that has long since been lost in antiquity.     

My grandmother had a ration book, and you had to use ration stamps when you purchased anything that was considered necessary for the war effort.   I remember she gave her son-in-law, my aunt/sister Carroll’s husband, her stamp for an automobile tire and coffee (she drank tea.)

When my grandmother went to the store she had to use ration stamps to purchase sugar and cigarette, and it seems to me that you could break down a penny using tokens.   The tokens were plastic and some were made of a cheap metal.   I don’t remember exactly how they were used; but, sometimes my grandmother would receive them in change or use them for purchases. 

You had to be six before school started to enter first grade – there was no kindergarten.    I did not turn six until a few months later so I was delayed starting school until I was seven.  There was a family that would bring their children to school on a mule drawn wagon.   The kids wore hand made clothes or hand-me-downs and were barefooted.  I don’t remember thinking that they were unusual – this was a rural county.   Their youngest boy was in my first grade.   Later during the school year he fell off the back of the wagon and broke his neck.  That was the first time I realized that children could die – that I could die - and it really scared me.  

That pretty much covers my Kentucky memories.

Next post will be on a young Kentucky boy’s transition to the Mississippi Delta.