After checking my financial account beginning about a week ago, I decided that the new slogan out of Washington must be “Make America Poor again”! I understand that neither of the guys who are doing this have ever been poor, but my situation was different.
I was born in cotton country in north Alabama. Families got by on what they could grow in their gardens and an occasional chicken or squirrel. My grandmother and my mother knew how to make biscuits and cornbread.
I remember my father taking the last Silver Dollar he had saved and buying some food from the Peddler who came down 16th Section Road about once a week.
My Grandfather was a sharecropper. He lived in the big house on the property. The two smaller houses were occupied by the families of two married daughters.. One daughter, my mother, lived in one of the houses with her family. One of her sisters lived in the other house with her family. I think you could say that we sharecropped with a sharecropper!
We lived about two miles from the two country stores and cotton gins that served the community. We had one Aladin lamp and a couple of coal oil lamps. My grandparents had a four-party telephone. There were no secrets on our road.
The closest doctor was 16 miles away in Huntsville, a little town of about 16,00 population at that time.
Eventually the Federal government decided to take advantage of the Tennessee River to help the people. Dams were built on the river to generate power. By the time I was 9 or 10 we had at least one electric bulb hanging in each of the four rooms. The Federal Government helped the citizens ln those days. To get water we had to walk quiet a distance to draw a gallon of water from the deep well and bring it back to the house. There was no running water. Baths were once a week using a pan and wash cloth. Everyone understood what it meant to “go out back.” Corn cobs and last year’s Sears Roebuck catalog came in handy.
Eventually we had one cow to provide milk, and a few chickens for eggs and occasional meat.
I had one aunt who went to Nashville to attend a business school. I was the first of my family to go to college. The little school that I attended at Harvest had eight grades in four rooms.
Even though alcoholism is a serious problem in our time I think most folks are more interested in the price of eggs and bread than in French wine.
Social Security. By the time I was 17 I was investing a small amount with the government in a program called Social Security. When my father died and I cleaned out the chifrobe I found a small piece of paper showing that my father had paid .13 cents of his weekly salary of about $12 into Old Age Benefits. He did better financially as the years passed, but he died of a heart attack after drawing only two checks from Social Security.
I have also invested in insurance from time to time. I trusted the government to take care of my Social Security money and see that it grew enough to help me when I was older and had only income from my savings. In 2021 the government owed me money due to overpayment. I have gone through all kind of hoops with the IRS to get my refund. I am still waiting. When I saw he headline that the department should be cut I wondered if I will ever receive what I am owed.
I have been blessed abundantly to live in this country and I dislike seeing it torn down. I have sought to serve God and to teach others to do so.
I appreciate men and women who seek to serve their country though public service but I don’t think very highly of political men or women who love their party more than their constituents.
“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.” (Prov. 28:6 ESV)
The man who says or acts as if he needs no one is truly a poor man!
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Prov. 14:34 ESV)
See our earlier post, The Arrogance of Rulers Leads to the Fall of Nations here: https://ferrelljenkins.blog/2024/07/11/the-arrogance-of-rulers-leads-to-the-fall-of-nations/
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