Sad Truth

Roan Highlands in background

There's one sad truth in life I've found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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After the end of WWII, we were pressured by a generation whom lived through a depression era (caused by greed) to live the "American Dream". We were taught to better ourselves at every turn in our lives. Get a steady job in a mill or factory, buy a car, get married and have a family and most of all, buy a house. A lot of us followed that doctrine to the letter.

Our parents didn't learn one damn thing from all those years of depression poverty except that having money to buy things is better than being poor and sometimes hungry. They didn't stop to realize that money is what makes a person poor. Our problem now is that we have never had to do without for very long, if ever.

I've never been hungry in the sense that I had very little to eat and the prospects of having food were at best an illusion. I am happy, because my elected government, financial institutions, and ad agencies say that I am.

I am in debt up to the topmost gray hair on my thinly populated head. I'm happy! I am nearly 64 years old and get credit card offers in the mail on a near daily basis. That makes me happy. There is no way I can ever pay off my creditors, and in a short time--dead or alive--I plan to turn my back on all those wise institutions. That makes me ecstatic! They know now and knew when they trusted me with all the credit that my income was from government dole.

They and I must reap what we have sown.
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Just read an obit telling that an old neighbor from my youth has died. George "Tootie" Keys passed away in Monroe, Michigan. Tootie was one of those characters in life that we never forget. He had tales to tell, and told them well.