YOU THINK THINGS ARE BAD:

They really are for the poor people of this country. And not to many

people of this country really care about them. There are not many

menial jobs for the poor and uneducated people. I hear all the talk about people need to get out and get a job. Where? Doing what? All our manufacturing jobs that people could do by using their hands, backs and muscles are gone. Sent to another country, so that the owners of the companies could make more money. Or someone figured out a way to get the jobs done by technology, so they could get rid of the people. Companies do not have service people to answer their telephones. No more telephone operators. Service stations no longer have service. No attendants, no one to fix a tire, no one to check and put oil in your vehicle if needed. No shops to repair appliances. No shoe repair shops. Can’t get anything fixed. You can do without or go buy new ones, maybe, but mostly you go to Goodwill, Salvation Army or more well off will give you their old castaways.

Once in many parts of this country and still in some parts, you could at least be able to be a sharecropper some place or have a small piece of land that you could have a garden to grow your own food, with space to have a cow or two, for your milk and butter, a few chickens for your eggs and chickens to eat, or even a pig or two for meat. You worked for the owner for this. You didn’t get paid, but you could feed your family and put a roof over them. Outhouses, bathe in washtubs, with water drawn from a well or carried from a spring or go to the nearby creek in the summer time to bathe. Cut your own stove and fire wood. Kerosene lamps. Wash your clothes on a rub board and boil them in a wash pot then hang them on a fence line to dry. Sprinkle them with a little water and iron them with a smoothing iron heated on the cook stove. Make your own clothes from printed feed sacks and undergarments and baby clothes from flour sacks. You always unraveled the threads from the sacks, wrapped them into a ball and crocheted with it. You sewed your clothes by hand or if you were lucky a sewing machine. You made your own quilts from scraps, such as old clothes, no fancy blankets to cover you in the wintertime.

No electricity, no air conditioners, no telephone, no television, maybe a battery operated radio to be used on Saturday night, as there was no place and no way to go anyplace unless it was absolutely necessary. You cooked your food fresh every day. You kept your milk and butter, by putting it down in the well or building a small box in the spring.

As your vegetables were gathered, you cooked to eat and canned the rest for winter. You gathered berries, wild grapes, plums and made jelly and jams to eat and can. If you were lucky and the owner grew his own cane, when syrup was made with your labor and hard work, he divided with you. The same when hog killing time came along. Everyone helped during these times and everyone shared a little for, their help.

Your gun or guns stood in the corner of a room, they were there for a purpose everyone had guns and fishing poles. No one ever got hurt. Children were taught to use guns and could go hunting for squirrels, rabbits, ducks, quail and all manner of edible animals for food. Other than chicken and pork, this was your meat. We had fish all year around you caught them with a pole or on trotlines or seine. You could have frog legs by gigging frogs on the creek. But at least you never went hungry if you were willing to work.

Healthcare: You used natural remedies your Grandparents handed down from their Indian ancestors. There was lots of uses for vinegar, it stopped bleeding, so did smut from the fireplace, kerosene, turpentine, all these things healed insect bites and were put on different types of wounds. Cough medicine: teaspoon of sugar with a couple of drops of kerosene or turpentine. Babies were born at home, with the help of relatives or a midwife.

Doctors actually came to your home, either on horseback or buggy. They accepted food as payment, eggs, bacon, sausage, vegetables, syrup, honey, cornmeal, canned goods, potatoes, anything they could use, as they didn’t have time or a place to grow their own.

Nowadays we would have a problem with that. There is no place to farm and no one would know how. Plus the government has taken most of the small farms and they wound up being put in the hands of large conglomerates. Leaving no place for a small farmer and sharecroppers to live and make a living. Practically all, timberland was bought up by large conglomerates - leaving no place for the wildlife to live.

The younger generation thinks everything comes from the grocery store, and have no idea how it got to the grocery store. They couldn’t live a week without everything to entertain them or going to the fast food places to eat. They ask their parents for money and if they are told, “I don’t have any”, their reply is “write a check”…Or use your credit card. A lot of poor people do not have checks nor credit cards, and with no jobs or any in sight, with no money at all. What will they do? Beg-- steal? I always try to put myself in someone else’s shoes when I think of being in a situation like.

One thing I decided, I would beg, (but of course the laws do not allow you to beg on the street) they call it panhandling, they have a damn law for everything now. But if I had children who were hungry and I couldn’t get food any other way I would steal it. So it doesn’t sound nice!! Have any of you ever had any hungry little ones? I wonder what any of you would do. I see the poor hungry children in Africa and other places and it makes me ill. We have them in the US also. One thing I will tell you, it makes me want to kill every leader of every country that allows the citizens to be treated so badly. I have been told that in his own time, God will take care of the bad guys, I don’t mean to tell him how to take care of his business, but he has taken too long on many of them.

We all have our thoughts and I have wondered why God would let someone like Satan challenge him to such a duel over his people and let such needless suffering happen. It’s like what has happened in places all over the world the governments leaders must have been spawned by Satan. And we sit and let it happen. Can we ever change it or do we have to wait for God to take care of us. He gave us the knowledge to know right from wrong. Let’s all start doing the right thing and straighten up our country and take care of the citizens and live as God would have wanted us to do. Love each other and do unto others, as we would have them do unto us.