Mr President, Save Our Twinkies

 

I remember my first Twinkie. I don't think it was very fresh (although I understand, with Twinkies, "freshness" is rather a marginal term). My first bite of a Twinkie was my last. I don't think anyone was around to eat the rest, either. I fear it ended up in the garbage.

There's something curious about a Twinkie. You put it in your mouth, you start chewing on it, if you can call that "chewing," ("assimilating," perhaps, is a better term) and you realize, almost immediately, that this Twinkie is not going to satisfy you. You know it's going to take more. You're going to need another Twinkie!

It's like smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer. Beer doesn't actually "quench" your thirst. It provokes it! Beer doesn't make you stop drinking; it encourages you to drink more! You smoke one cigarette, and somehow, the cigarette doesn't satisfy you. Oh, it creates a mood of well being for a moment, but then it's gone, gone, gone! You need another one. You become a slave to the habit, and soon, the habit becomes an addiction.

That's what I thought of when I took my first bite of a Twinkie. I thought to myself, I don't need this! I have enough addictions!

I never had another bite of a Twinkie. I've never even had the desire for another one.

Now, I am not a Twinkie virgin by the strictest definition, but in essence, to press the metaphor a little, you could call me a Twinkie "amateur," just as you might call another person, who has only dabbled in sex, a sexual "amateur." I didn't finish it. It was one bite, that's all. I don't ever want to eat another.

You see this trait in people who have had just a little sex in life; they have no desire because they don't recognize what they're missing. The first experience was clumsy and messy, and they don't want any more of it!

This explains how a perfectly edible Twinkie, concocted and baked by some 18,000 employees, went straight into the garbage. It was discarded like a whore, I'm just a little ashamed to say. And the price paid for it - I don't think I bought it - but that price went to waste. And soon, we may never see a fresh Twinkie again. (I realize, I might have misused "fresh" again here, but I think you see where I'm going.)

And yet, we're talking about much more than an addiction. The simple fact that we're not going to have them around anymore is such a tragedy all by itself. People! People! We will miss our Twinkies!

I say to our President, save our Twinkies!

I think one of the saddest things about Twinkies is that the term has been used to apply to a baseball team, namely, the Minnesota Twins. How clever, but oh, how rude! I'm a fan of the Twins! And I've even started calling them "Twinkies." "Are the Twinkies playing tonight?" my wife will ask. (Really what she's asking for is a foot rub. She lies on the couch and reads while I watch the Twinkies lose another game.)

Calling my beloved baseball team the "Twinkies" is a rude slap in the face, in my judgment, and yet, I find myself doing it just the same. It's like reaching for one more cigarette or another beer. I do it without thinking! I don't mean to slight the baseball team or the Twinkie brand; nor do I intend to slight the fact that 18,000 workers at Hostess will be laid off.

It's rude of me, and rude of us all! We need to do something.

It's time for our Twinkies to rise up and assert themselves. They can't let labor unions push them around anymore.

When GM had trouble, people noticed. When Chrysler had trouble, people noticed. When Toyota had trouble, when the banking industry had trouble, when the housing industry had trouble, people noticed. They realized it was an important thing, and now, the Twinkie is in trouble, and it seems like nobody cares!

It's so sad. There is a very serious side to all this! 18,000 workers might soon lose their good-paying union jobs and benefits. And other products, like Wonder Bread and various other Hostess foods are disappearing from the shelves. I haven't seen a loaf of Wonder Smart Bread for about a year! My wife and I used to look for it and buy it at its inflated price, and eat it, just to grow thinner! Sometimes there were only two loaves of it on the shelf, and we'd snatch them up!

Now we are growing fat again because Smart bread is not available, and we have to buy stupid plain bread! And yet, the signature product, the Twinkie, is the one we all remember.

Jobs are in jeopardy! The debacle at Hostess is not a complicated thing! It would be such a simple matter to keep the company going. We could just do what we've done in the past and will likely do again: Cut employees' pay! Eliminate their benefits! Start by firing 'em all! Dissolve the company temporarily, thereby allowing it to escape legal obligations to the greedy workers! Let the company rename itself. "Host," perhaps, would be an acceptable alternative. (They could name the new product "Twinkles.")

Then, hire 'em all back. If employees want to come back at a tiny fraction of their former wages, fine. If they won't tolerate working for slave wages, then hire somebody who will! We should be reaching out to the poor and destitute, the homeless, the penniless people in the streets, and offering them work! We have enough of them! Some of those people should be able to handle it! I mean, how complicated can it be to make those little balls of dough?

We don't need to give employees benefits either. Just let 'em eat the product! How many Twinkies/Twinkles can one worker eat in a day anyhow? It doesn't matter! It would be a small sacrifice.

So there's your solution. If the former workers don't want to make Twinkies for that kind of money, hire others who will. That's how you save a company.

Perhaps this is a hint of what's going to happen when we go over the fiscal cliff in about a month or two. I personally think saving Hostess would be good practice for what's coming next! Don't you?

It's obvious why nobody's lifting a finger, though, isn't it? We all know perfectly well that the Government could act, but as we are also aware, Hostess, (or "Host," as it soon may come to be known), with its measly 18,000 employees, is much too small to be considered a "small business" to the Redemopublicrats! If you're going to be a small business, worthy of consideration for financial resuscitation in this great country at a time like this, you need to be at least three or four times as big. THAT is what they call "SMALL"!

When the Redemopublicrats say they want to save "small business," they're not talking about small business! Are you kidding? They're talking about BIG small business!

Most American businesses do not quite measure up. Piddly little nickel and dime operations like Hostess rank with handy men working out of their garages! They mean little or nothing to the Redemopublicrats.

But, my God! We're talking about our Twinkies here, folks!

If he only had the political will, the President would fix this all by himself. You know he would. If he wanted to, he would intercede! He'd make them compromise, as he did GM and others.

So join me in raising our voices. Like I say, it's great practice for later! Twinkies, arise! Let's everyone appeal to the President and force him to step up to the plate!

Come on, Mr. President, show us how it's done! Do what you did for GM!

Ronald Reagan once told Gorbachev to tear down that wall. Now, at this pregnant moment, we appeal to you with the same sense of urgency:

MR. PRESIDENT! SAVE OUR TWINKIES!

Time to try Sandusky's Soul, or the Souls of Us All?

 

The Sandusky matter has been bothering me, not the Penn State thing exactly, but the way we've been going at it.

I need to tell you from the start, I don't mean to be unpatriotic. Patriotism means a great deal to me. I am in awe of our service men and women; I am proud of my uncle, Marine Lt. Col. John Skorich, who, as I understand, flew with the Black Sheep Squadron and served in Korea and later died in a plane crash. I was but a child then, but I felt my mother's loss at the death of her brother, whom she loved, and in whom she had placed such pride. I was then, and am to this day, proud of his swagger, his life style, his boldness. I wanted to be like him since I was a small boy. My appreciation and love for the man, and my pride still sends shivers through me.

I am also proud of all my uncles, cousins, and my many other relatives who served.

I didn't serve, but I assert my right to admire their dedication and to feel grateful, just as I'm grateful for all those who have endured these more recent years of conflict. Some who died were friends. Some were students. Some were sons of colleagues. It was different for them than for me, I know. And it's hard to speak of these things.

It tries my soul.

So what does the Sandusky matter have to do with them?

He is accused and convicted of being a sexual predator. He served as a coach, not as a member of the military. As a coach, within that small scope of duty, he served well. For years, however, he was also guilty of gross sexual misconduct.

Now a host of questions follow: Officials at Penn State, it appears, attempted to cover up a horrendous act. More importantly, they failed to stop the ongoing abuse as it occurred. Not just a few knew of the man's behavior. Although on a smaller scale, the scandal can be compared to the Catholic Church's concealment of similar types of abuse for generations, or to other injustices on even larger scales.

What do we want? We want to pry into it, of course. We want to understand exactly who is to blame. We want no doubts about it in the future. We want to make it clear that we will not tolerate similar behavior again.

But stand back a moment and examine this question: Why are we making such demands? Why are we totally immersed? Do we not see ourselves tightly focusing on the errors of a few people as we lay waste to the reputation of an entire educational institution? Is this any way to seek justice? Should we now dishonor, perhaps even deface, Penn State? Or has the negligence of Penn State's staff and administration already defaced that institution? Are we doing right, or are we behaving this way for reasons other than our desire for justice?

Why are we doing this? Do we behave so because we're all safe to pile blame on certain individuals, to remain innocent ourselves as we make accusations and demand that things be made "right" - whatever that may mean - money, I suppose, for the victims, punishment for the criminal? What do we want, anyway, and why do we feed as we do on it?

"These are the times that try men's souls."

Yes, Mr. Paine. Yes, they are. Oh, and we will try them all right: We'll make certain Sandusky sits in jail for the rest of his life. We'll get after Paterno too, dead man or not. We'll soil his achievements with this stuff and erase them from history. We will fire administrators, maybe even send some of them to jail. We will also make certain that Penn State University, the institution, pays dearly. We will try all their souls, and we will make certain the victims are honored and apologized to.

Take another step back now: A nation can do the same thing Penn State did, when you think of it. Think of it; don't look away:

An entire nation can deceive itself into misbehavior. A nation can overlook the mistakes of leaders when they act on its behalf. Some will want to pursue a thorough investigation into the matter, but many others will slam the door on it; they will say, "No, we cannot. That's unpatriotic!"

Of course, we're not talking about Penn State or Sandusky or Joe Paterno any more. We're talking about our country.

I heard some of you say it: "Stop right there!"

Yes, I heard it. I hear it all the time. Well, then, I have a great idea: Let's put both of these issues to rest, the error of Penn State and the error of our country.

No? Why not? Is the Penn State thing somehow worse?

Maybe it truly is.

Well, then. Shall we go farther into it and see? Maybe we'll find that these two issues are so entirely disconnected and so logically removed from each other that the one thing we would do is just fine after all, and the other thing is entirely wrong. A closer look should make things clear, don't you think?

Yes, yes. Patriotism. Already mentioned that. Sorry. I just thought maybe we could all "try [our] souls," the way Paine truly meant. He didn't intend for us merely to find a victim. He meant for us to try ourselves. That is patriotism, dear citizens. But it's pretty easy to try just one pervert and pry into the affairs of others who covered up sexual sensationalism, easier because we are not personally involved.

For just a moment, though, have courage. Be true patriots. Let's do the harder thing and try our own souls:

When we started a war as a nation based on so-called "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction ("WMD's," remember?) -

Oh that's different? Want to put that and the Sandusky thing behind us? No further investigations necessary?

Why do we behave this way? Is a sexual crime more egregious? Does all the dishonesty associated with it harm people in more significant ways?

Am I defacing the memory of my students and colleagues and friends and relatives who have served, or are we behaving like the administrators of a large institution who have already defaced a remarkably similar thing by their negligence?

Maybe stories of WMD's were somehow justified. Can we pry into that? Were those things an unintentional "miscalculation" on the part of our leadership? Were we all afraid?

Was Penn State afraid? Are they under attack? Did they get defensive and do wrong?

Did we, as a nation, do wrong, going to war because we "had targets"? Why did we do that? Is Penn State just another good "target"? Why are we doing this?

"These are the times that try men's souls." Are we up to the task, or is it dead in us?

Does this whole thing bother you too?

Do Not Fear the Redemopublicrats

 

Whenever we act straight from fear without examining the facts ourselves and considering all of the possibilities, we become the instruments of larger political forces. Politicians disagree on a lot of things, and they make lots of noise about petty matters, but they have a common agenda, and when we get sucked into taking part in the bashing and name-calling, we're just following along with their scheme, like sheep. It is and has long been the purpose of the Redemopublicrats to fleece us. They have been fleecing us for the past two generations at least.

The country was a lot different fifty years ago. The middle class had real wealth, pension plans, health benefits, and good paychecks that bought much more than we can afford today. Then those in power began taking it away. What they did was fraudulent, but both parties joined in. Today, we can't even collect interest on our bank accounts anymore. We've been forced into borrowing money and paying interest to a system designed to drain it out of us.

That's usury. But to rationalize what they do to us, and to continue doing the same in the future, they don't dare explain it in those words. They won't say that they intend to continue screwing the wealth out of us, but they're perfectly aware of it. In fact, in frank discussions among themselves, I believe they use that language to describe it, but only on a confidential basis. If they wanted us to think, they'd be speaking about all of this publicly, and they'd be talking to us about possible solutions and the various scenarios that might result from each, instead of telling us to be afraid of trying "the other guy's ideas" because it "WILL destroy our way of life as we know it."

If they wanted to have real discussions, those in power would begin laying out their proposals by expressing the same facts, and the facts wouldn't be "fuzzy," or constantly changing. The facts may even include a confession, even an apology perhaps, that those who ran the so-called "free market" in the past, whether they were Democrats, Republicans, or anything else, made gross errors that have led to the deterioration of the entire country. Their stories would begin with those admissions and a list of past errors. The facts would be the same, no matter which political party was proposing solutions. That is how an intelligent discussion would begin.

The reality is, our political parties don't present us with facts. They make up silly scenarios from half-truths and they tell us to be afraid.

We need to stop listening to those crazy bastards who are telling us to be afraid. They're demanding that we shoulder the burdens of their own fears. And believe me, they are truly afraid. They have a lot to lose; they understand the fraud that went into obtaining what they have; they understand completely that their wealth is a "house of cards." But they want to keep their "house of cards" intact, even though everything that has gone into maintaining its existence has decimated the country at large.

We never became a great nation in the first place by making other people's fears into ours. We should be indignant. This system isn't working, and it's not working because it's not a democracy anymore. A privileged class rules the United States of America today, and the simplest way to identify them is by listening to the noises they make. Those in charge are attempting to manipulate us by telling us to be afraid instead of asking us to think. We need to take charge, not through violence or bluster, but by rational and intelligent political action. We need to think for ourselves and quit being afraid of the Redemopublicrats.

Maintaining the Main Drain

While discussing politics and the economy with my friend Pat, he got me started on something. "Are people blind?" he asked.

Yup, people are blind. More accurately, people see what they want to see. I'm afraid we're all a little like that. I'm like the rest, I'll admit; I want friends in politics too! I want a party that looks out for me, and I keep trying to find one.

But I can't find one.

 

The Republicans tell us that the Democrats are lying; the Democrats tell us that the Republicans are lying.

Who's lying?

We see what we want to see. We want the truth to be "black" or "white." It's hard to keep an open mind. It's easier the other way; but, my fellow Americans, our "friends" in politics are not always our "friends." We need to stop bowing to party lines, whether we're Republicans or Democrats.

I'm tired of politicians talking about their party "base." I think people who swallow the party's story, any party's story, are well named. They are "base" people indeed. Rich or poor, common folk or nobility, they're truly "base," because they allow themselves to be led around by the nose.

Instead of thinking for themselves, "base" people try to find someone else to figure it out for them. But politicians are not going to figure it out for us, because they're not on our side right now.

Those in power mostly see us as an obstacle to retaining their power, not as people to serve or even people who have anything of importance to say. All they really want from us is our votes. They'd like us to stay right where we are, under their thumbs. They have no interest in changing this economy. They like it "lean and mean." They want to continue siphoning off wealth for themselves. That's the main principle of business. That's the truth.

But neither party tells the whole truth. One says business owners build businesses. The other tells us business is built on the back of government. That little argument is a good example of the kind of bait that's often dangled in front of us. The story looks pretty good, so we swallow the one or the other; then we just look for more of the same stuff to feed on.

Business is built on our backs. No business is entirely "made" by the "makers" of business. No business is entirely "made" by the government. We, the consumers and customers, are the business. Entrepreneurs in this country accumulate wealth, build stuff or provide services, and "sell" us the story that their prices are worth paying. We buy their stories. That's what makes business go. We need to understand that. We are the business. How is it that the Democrats and the Republicans have found it appropriate to leave us out of their myths about "business"?

Here's part of the answer: Republicans, for the past couple of generations, have pretty much had their way arranging tax cuts for themselves and dismissing government oversight from their "business," but the Democrats have excused, and are continuing to excuse the rich Republicans from their misbehavior. They carefully avoid saying much about the 99% to 1% disparity in wealth today, and they don't mention that the disparity is largely a product of government policy over the past 25 years. Of course, the reason Democrats excuse it is because they're rich too. They're in on it. They overwork and overtax the middle class and the working poor, then sell goods and services back to us at the highest prices they can gouge out of us.

But they leave us out when they explain "business," because what they do to us is the dirty truth, and any admission of it would make them all look dirty.

Business is something imposed upon us, and most of time, we let it happen because we think it has to be that way, and we think it has to be that way because they say so. But we need to realize at some point that $4.00 a gallon for gas is probably a higher price than necessary, especially when a business sector is gouging us for billions in profits

It doesn't have to be that way.

We should be able to share some of that wealth. And maybe keeping some of it and spreading it around won't entirely solve our problems; maybe bus drivers can't collect full retirement benefits when they get old, and maybe waitresses can't have full health benefits. But we could do better than we do now.

Redemopublicrats are as blind as we are to that and a whole lot more. They wear blinders made of hundred dollar bills, and they do the best they can to keep us blinded too. They now have most of us convinced that there is no other way but theirs, whatever "theirs" happens to be.

When we accept that the Redemopublicrats' alternatives are the only solutions, we're all taking part in "maintaining the main drain" on the economy. The "main drain" they maintain is chiefly what keeps it down, not entitlement programs or welfare. The "main drain" is the most serious moral issue today, not illegal immigration or abortion, either of which could be easily and quickly made into a non-issue by people with half a mind and more interest in solving problems than in profits.

Why It Makes No Sense to Vote

Debt is indentured servitude (i.e. - enslavement). When the Redemopublicrats needed a bank bailout, they asked the American people to pony up a loan to rescue the financial sector from disaster. We rescued them, but we weren't given any choices. In our name, Congress saw to it that we provided the funds. As a result, the financial sector is now fat and healthy, and the health of the middle class and working poor is in decline. We're saddled with debt (i.e. - enslaved, some of us more, some less), and that debt will be here for a long, long time.

Obama and Romney agree that the financial sector should survive, despite its greed and errors. Their biggest argument, for the moment at least, is all about who should carry the greater burden of debt into the future for the errors of the past. But they're refusing to confront the errors that are being made today by those who hold the real power.

Romney wants the burden of debt to stay right where it is, on the shoulders of the middle class and working poor. He tells us that he wants us all to "grow the pie" and get rich together. But he doesn't mean that. What he means is we, the enslaved masses, will continue to work and create the wealth, and he and his affluent friends will continue to fleece us.

Obama pretends that raising taxes on the rich will shift the burden to the rich and provide a solution. It's a hollow argument, because that tax increase is going to happen anyway, regardless of who wins this election. And it will amount to nothing but a meaningless gesture. The shift in the burden will not be significant. It will not solve problems. The filthy rich will never see 90% tax rates as they did back in the 1950's. They are in power now, and they will not stand for it. All of the Redemopublicrats, including Obama, know this to be true.

Neither one is apologizing for how they, the Redemopublicrats, oversaw and facilitated the dismantling of the middle class for the past 25 years, the cutting of jobs and wages, the elimination of health benefits, the gutting of pension funds, and the shipping of jobs overseas, all of which spiraled communities deeper into financial pits of varying depths and forced people to work harder, do more, and get along with less. They made us all "lean and mean," and they were proud of it, because all of the reduction in pay increased profit margins and swelled stock prices. They made lots of money on the scheme.

It all worked until it became impossible to sustain. You can't sell things to people who can't afford to buy them anymore. But the smartest crooks, those who knew from the start that it was a Ponzi scheme, got out of the market before it fell. They are Redemopublicrats, they all have a big stake in the scheme, and they all have pretty good bankrolls. They protected themselves, and they remain fat and healthy. There are no apologies forthcoming.

While all of this is going on, the financial sector continues to make risky investments to the current day, just as they did before the big disaster. They're still growing their fortunes off the backs of people who are forced to do more for smaller wages. The one percent continues to strip the rest of us dry. But the top one percent (and even the top two or three percent, and perhaps even a large share of the top four) include many, many Redemopublicrats, and they're either continuing to participate in the scheme, or they are continuing to oversee and facilitate it. The petty argument over who will pay when people get sick and the tirade over education and even the disagreement about whether some people's taxes will go up or down are essentially diversions. On the whole, as far as the Redemopublicrats in the one or two percent or so are concerned, the system is humming along and doing just fine.

That's your real "recipe for disaster," and neither Romney nor Obama is talking about it. No political candidates are talking about it. The Redemopublicrats are impotent; votes mean nothing; the political landscape is barren. The financial sector is in control of this country, and our votes can't touch them.

When Barroom Politics and Christians Mix

Conversation in five parts, overheard at modern society's only remaining center for broad and general (although at times, a bit convoluted) intellectual exchange - THE LOCAL BAR! Offered for informational purposes only. No further comment needed:

Seven or eight folks, presumably all of them voters, seated around a big table, talking about the news - good, bad, and mixed. (Translations provided for the sake of brevity, contradictions included, most severe expletives deleted):

Proud Americans Engaged in Political Discourse, Part I:

During a reasonable state of sobriety before and during a first round of shots, conversation focused on the following:

"Condemning the privileged class (bankers and a myriad of others who control financial institutions) that don't listen but tell others what's right and wrong, people who busy themselves by gathering and spending the symbols of wealth (money) produced by others who actually produce the actual wealth of this country ("people like us, who MAKE the real stuff" instead of just collecting money), called "money-changers" in the Bible, people who define the gathering of money as "work" (which it actually isn't if you're not really making "real stuff"), and look after their own comforts, all promoted and defended and misguided by an amalgam of Democrats - and Republicans too, oh yes! - Who disguise their greed and tyranny beneath religious self-righteousness and patriotism. Further conversation on politics, fearful religious dogma, apocalypse, end of the world, war, world war, class warfare, terrorism, political corruption, deviance, sexual perverts, prostitution, intrusions on privacy, violations of rights by people who are exercising their rights beyond limits, etc."

Proud Americans Engaged in Political Discourse, Part II:

(New round of shots, growing state of inebriation) Attention turns to the good news:

"Calm down y'all, cause Jesus is coming and he'll have it all figured out when he gets here, so relax! Pray a little bit and quit feeling responsible. We have nothing to worry about. It's God's fault. (Expletives and laughter.) Oh! Well! OK, I didn't mean that. It's not really his "fault," but it's his "business," and we don't have to feel responsible. Nothing is permanent. But sunrises are lovely, and oh, look at the pretty sunset out there right now, and the birds and rabbits are busy, and spiders and insects are buzzing, and my daughter's new prom dress is so pretty, (extended conversation about numerous other trivial but happy little items of interest), etc., and people here are going to be fine if they get out of the way, because the oil is flowing in North Dakota. (More general laughter)"

Proud Americans Engaged in Political Discourse, Part III:

(Another round of shots.) The answers emerge:

"It's in the Bible, somewhere. And I know it says love "your neighbor" and "your enemy," but I know that doesn't apply to me. I have a special right to hate some things, and I'm going to heaven anyway. Yes, usury is supposed to be a sin too, but we're immune to that, even though some of us make dividends on the big banks that impose usury. And I really shouldn't want anyone dead because the Holy Book says I shouldn't, but man, we gotta kill people that deserve it, like really bad people in our prisons, cause they're living off my money every day, and if there's a little "collateral damage" in foreign countries, well, maybe the "innocent ones" will get out of the way when we bomb them next time (laughter). I mean, they gotta get out of the target areas, you know? That's their lookout, not mine.

"It's like some jerk in this bar who lost a twenty out of his pocket last week and walked out of the bar, and I saw it and bent over and took it. That's not really stealing. It's his lookout, not mine. And when a numbskull like that gets sick and runs to some emergency room and tries to get in there on my money because he's lost his own, or because he can't earn enough, well, he's just gonna have to die in the gutter.

Proud Americans Engaged in Political Discourse, Part IV:

(During and after yet another round of shots.) Justification from the Bible and History:

"And there's something in the Bible about taking care of others, and something else about not eating pork, and a lot of other bogus stuff too. But I know exactly what the Bible actually means, and I know what's really evil, like gays, and people taking away my guns, and socialists (except I get to have my Social Security - That's mine! Don't try to take that away from me!) and that's all covered in the Bible somewhere, and I know it because I think maybe I read it once, but more importantly, I've been told by people who know (and I know they really, really know because they told me they really, really know), and they got it from a previous generation who really, really, really knew how to sort out the crap in the Bible from the holiness, who got it from another generation who got it from another one, and somewhere back there, were these people who really, really, really understood. And we gotta trust history! (General agreement about the importance of history around the table.)

"So I don't have to ponder the "Holy Word!" It's all been pondered for me. I can forget about doing unto others as I would have them do unto me, because I've decided to rephrase it: Do it to them before they get me! (more laughter)

Proud Americans Engaged in Political Discourse, Part V:

(Near closing) Parting Shots:

"Ya! That's the way it really is. So come to church with me this Sunday and get on your knees and get saved again with me, and take Holy Communion with Jesus H. Christ Almighty look at them !! - uh, and get ready to go to heaven, or don't, I don' t care. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm an American Christian, take it or leave it, just as you will. And here's how this here American Christian feels: As long as you're alive, get out of the way of my military and my own independent little army, which I operate with my own 30-06, and go to Hell when you die." (more laughter)

The remainder of the conversation was unintelligible.

Redemopublicrats for Mediocrity

Some guy named Steve has been bragging about his business on facebook. Steve is a Republican, supporting Romney, but it doesn't really matter. Parties and politics, Republicans and Democrats, they're two sides of the same coin. Behold the Redemopublicrats' chorus for the modern age, sung by a businessman, not Steve himself, perhaps, but maybe, just maybe one like Steve, who might dare to tell it like it really is:

"OK. I'll tell ya! I got my stuff the hard way. I worked for it.

"Yeah, yeah, you worked too, but a lot of you are too stupid or too lazy to work smart, or you just don't have enough desire to get ahead, or you're such bleeding hearts for one another that you're always giving the best of yourself away, so you just work your ass off for people like me, and you ain't never gonna have what I have.

"I use you, and you let it happen. I transport stuff across public roads that you agree to build and maintain with your taxes. My employees are educated in public schools that you pay for. I even get people on Social Security to come in and buy my hot dogs.

"See, you're just like one of those sidewalks or streets you're taxed for: I have walked and driven over you for years in order to gather wealth. I have taken advantage of you and this mediocre system, but I am not criticizing the system, oh no! I am praising it for its mediocrity. That system must stay mediocre in order for me to continue enjoying the advantages.

"I do not need more wealthy people in my community. I need poor people! I need people in desperate financial circumstances who are willing to sling my hot dogs at the lowest possible wages so that I can make a modest million. And I am delighted to say, our two political parties are both doing their very best to maintain a good supply of them. So when we tell you we'll get richer together, please understand, that's not about to happen.

"We need poor people in this country in order for me to be rich. We ain't never gonna all get wealthy together. If we did, who'd make our hot dogs? If we all owned yachts, who'd fix 'em when they broke down? I wouldn't fix boats or sling dogs for a living. I'm better than that. Hell, I made a business!

"Now, I'm not in the one percent club yet, but I'm getting there. So the rest of you 99%, or whatever you call yourself, or the 94% or 95% who are beneath me, you stay right there for now. Do as you're told and give me a boost up. Then after I join the elite one percent, maybe one or two more of you will understand how to take advantage of the misery and desperation, and then you can climb over the rest of your kind and become one of us.

"Politicians got lots of money too; of course they do. Democrats and Republicans, it doesn't matter, both of 'em gotta have lots of money to be in politics nowadays. And they get lots of money from people like me. I pay for ads to convince people like you to vote for them and keep them in power.

"That's why they're with me, not with you. That's why you never really have much to vote for in this country. That's why our country ranks low in education and health in the world.

"They won't tell you the whole truth like I will, but they'll serve people like me, who give them money. And I'm telling it plain, since I'm just a little-bit rich guy now with a small business, but I'm gonna get a lot richer, and somebody's got to tell ya, 'cause you're obviously not well invormed.

"I feel sorry for ya. You poor, poor desperate people. I used to be a little like you, and I feel just a bit sorry for you sometimes, but I'm not gonna waste a lot of time on that. You just stay poor and desperate for a while more. Bite the bullet and vote. Vote for the only party available, the Redemopublicratic Party, any one of them, I don't care, and keep this wonderful country just the way it is, especially for people who are still among the pitiful 99% but on the way up, like me."

America’s Middle Class, DOA IV: The Day the Music (of the Middle Class) Died (for My Family, At Least)

The iron mines cut back, and on Dad’s last day of work, we became some of the first victims of the global economy. Foreign steel was becoming inexpensive. Mining companies would spend years trying to find ways to compete, but cuts were unavoidable. Dad lost his job. He had been working for a mining company for some time and had advanced to become an operator of an ore sampling drill. He could have stayed with the mines if he’d relocated, but he had invested so much of his life in his farm that he decided not to. Instead, he would farm full time and try to make it work.

It never did work. We dropped out of the middle class. The ladder disappeared from beneath us. 

Christmas was never the same again. I can remember well how it felt to be comfortably middle class, and I know what a struggle it was for us to lose out and never be there again. In microcosm, my dad’s story is this country’s story. The middle class has ceased to exist in the United States of America. Good, honest people who have no exceptional knowledge, talents, or skills can still dream of a better life. They just need jobs that pay a living wage. But those jobs have left the country.

The death of the middle class is concurrent with the proliferation of daycare centers, but the two are not merely coincidental. Time was, a breadwinner, even an undereducated, untrained one at entry level wages, could bring home enough money without overtime to take care of the family. Young children didn’t go to something called “daycare,” because they were at home with their moms.

These days, a “job” is anything paying wages, but most so-called “jobs” don’t provide a living. Now a typical worker is someone skilled, either certified in a trade, or educated with a degree, or experienced, who, if he or she is fortunate enough to obtain work at all, starts out at a wage below that of an excellent barmaid. If the breadwinner takes a second job and his or her mate also works, they might be able to afford the rent, utilities, a phone, transportation, daycare, and food. If they are very fortunate, one of their employers provides a family health plan, or a large share of it.

But by any decent standard, they are not middle class. A member of the middle class is not merely a person who earns ten thousand two hundred ten dollars and one cent. Middle class is a way of life, not a wage.

For a time, my dad was a prime example of the middle class. In his day, he could have afforded to buy an average home with his total yearly salary of about $6000, assuming he could have saved all of it, as the filthy rich can and often do. Of course he had other commitments, but he was middle class by that standard, nevertheless. Can you afford an average home on your annual salary?

Dad was able to provide living arrangements that were a little below average by some people’s standards, above average by others. He purchased a farm, including house, a garage, a well, and forty acres of land, for less than half his year’s salary. He paid $2500 for it. Could you actually purchase a house and property where you live for slightly less than half your yearly salary?

A fairly “average” new car in those days cost around one third of his salary. He could have laid out $2200 and taken home a new Ford or Chevy. Could you buy a new car today on a bit more than one third of your annual salary?

Dad was able to buy good food, and lots of it, for all five of us, for an entire month, on about a fifth of his gross monthly wages. What fractional part of your wages do you spend on food for a month?

Dad’s health benefits were excellent. The mining company provided them. He did not have to pay for health insurance. Do you have health insurance? Does your workplace really provide it, or do they deduct from your paycheck for it?

Dad had a retirement plan. He needed to be working for a number of years in order to become vested. The mining company played a dirty trick on him. They laid him off a year or so before he was vested. They saved a lot of money not having to provide for his retirement. It is a common trick played these days.

Since he was not particularly literate and was therefore not very knowledgeable about the details, he didn’t realize until years later what they’d done to him. He often wished he’d continued to work a year or two more with the company, even if he’d had to live in another community for part of the time, just long enough to obtain a retirement, and then he’d have been much better off. What kind of retirement plan do you have? Is it pretty risk free, or is there a chance it will be all gone when you’re of age?

Allow me to apply my situation and respond to the above questions. It is a matter of public record that a few years ago, after about 29 years of teaching, I reached the point in my career where I made over $60,000 for a yearly salary. On that basis, I will address the issues I’ve just raised:

House: If I bought a house for my year’s salary, assuming I could even find one, it would never measure up to the house of an average middle class person of the 1960’s. In some parts of this country, you can’t even buy a piece of ground big enough to put a house on for $60,000.

Car: I could never have bought a new car on a fifth of my salary through most of my working years. But now, I could buy a stripped down new car for one third of my salary. To get one I really want, I’d need to pay closer t half my salary, so I drive used cars now, like Dad did.

Food: Through most of my working years, food always took just a little more than a fifth of my wages, but if I wasn’t careful, it took a fourth, or more. Now the food budget holds pretty close to one fifth of my monthly income, more or less.

Health benefits: None of my health care is entirely free. I’m not complaining, though. Totally free health benefits have been all but utterly removed from the middle class for years. I’m just very fortunate to have benefits at all.

Retirement plan: This will be the next thing stolen from the middle class. It is happening all around us. Even the best plans are scaling down. Guaranteed retirement benefits are becoming more and more rare. We’ll all be on our own very soon. I am extremely fortunate. I retired from teaching full time less than one year ago. I was able to retire with full benefits at age 55. That’s how I’ve been able to find time for my passions of theater and writing.

As I see it, then, by 1960’s standards, I’m still not middle class, but a few years ago, when I reached the $60,000 mark in salary, after 29 years working in my field, I climbed a rung that got me at least a comparable lifestyle to the one my dad provided for a time in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. To maintain this standard of living after retirement, I still need to work a bit, and I’m doing so. We won’t need a spacious house when my wife and I have just one kid at home instead of three, as was the case a couple years ago. We’ll be able to scale down over the next five or ten years or so, and even if we drop back out of the middle class, the kids will probably be living on their own by then, and my wife and I won’t need to earn as much to remain comfortable.

Again I will repeat, I am not complaining. I am a very, very fortunate American. I actually have a little time to contemplate my life. By that standard alone, the privilege of having time to reflect on our lives, middle class status is a thing most of us will never get to enjoy. The rungs are disappearing under our feet. We Americans can be proud, on one hand, that we work harder than any other people in the world, but you don’t live with any kind of “class” when you can’t get enough traction to find time to enjoy your life. If you’re constantly scrambling to stay where you are, it’s not a living. It’s an effort to avoid going under.

America's Middle Class, DOA III: "What the Middle Class Once Was"

Now here is where I began putting together that scary thought I was talking about. I did a little research:

The Federal Government’s Department of Health and Human Services has developed “poverty guidelines.” So if you aspire to officially escape poverty as they define it in America, you just need to keep your wages above those limits. For an individual, the amount is $10,210. (Where do they get that extra ten bucks, anyway? Why can’t they call it $10,250, or even 10,500?) Add roughly $3480 for each member of the family. A family of five is “poverty level” if their income is under $24,130.

Does all this mean a family making $24,130.01 is middle class today?

Business and industry leaders want the economic engine to be lean and powerful, so for a long time, American labor has been “ramped up” in efficiency. It has been starved of wages, stripped of “extra” laborers, and made to work more hours per week, and then more yet, and a little more, until we have now become the hardest-working people in the world.

Life in this country has been compared to a climb up a ladder. We don’t all start at the bottom, of course, but some do, and according to legend, all have the same opportunity to move up. Perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, that the rungs on that ladder have been greased, and it is becoming more and more difficult to get traction on them. That sad fact is no accident. It is the result of profit-hungry business and industry leaders “restructuring” the workplace, reducing the workforce, and maintaining productivity, while at the same time enlisting help from the government to keep the economic engine purring.

But the economic engine has been forced to run lean for much too long, and now it’s starving of fuel. Americans are working harder than ever, but as a society, we’re not making very good progress. Retirement plans are disappearing. Investments by common working people have been hijacked by the rich and powerful. Too much of the money has been siphoned away and invested overseas, or it’s sitting in offshore banks, where it’s safe from the IRS. The nation ranks 34^th in the world in healthcare. The banking industry was allowed to sell the public some pretty shaky mortgages over the past several years, and now we have a credit crisis. People simply don’t have as much extra money to spend as they used to. Recession is imminent, and some fear that maybe it will be worse than a recession this time.

According to the myth, in the Land of Opportunity, success is limited only by an individual’s willingness to learn and work hard. Now, young college graduates, some with advanced degrees, are competing with former employees of industry, middle-aged, middle management types, for positions at information technology call-in centers, to work afternoon or graveyard shifts, for entry-level wages.

When they land those jobs and make $20,000 a year, are they really called “middle-class”?

I’m afraid I’ve always defined the middle class differently. For a while in my early years, before Dad lost his job, my family was middle class. My dad never graduated from high school and was not exceptionally literate, but he lived a good life. He was a very, very good man. His life was almost as adventurous as the lives of some famous characters from American literature. Like Huck Finn, he grew up without a mother and escaped his abusive father by leaving home before he was fifteen. Like Lennie and George in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, he spent his youth and most of his early adult years traveling from farm to farm doing all sorts of work. He used to tell stories of how he traveled the Dakotas, Montana, and Nebraska, sheering sheep for a few weeks here, picking potatoes there, harvesting, planting, and putting up hay. He learned skills along the way, rough carpentry, mechanics, and of course, farming and ranching.

He was a bit lonely at times, but happy on the whole. At the ridiculous age of 48, he got married. Then I was born, in 1952. He needed to find steady work, and he heard of jobs available in the iron mines of Northern Minnesota. He applied and was hired on as a common laborer.

Suddenly, we joined the American middle class. He worked at his job forty hours a week and came home with a paycheck. He had time to be with his family, get caught up with a few projects around the house, read the paper, sleep in, and even visit with me and my sister and brother, who came along in 1954 and 1956. He entertained us with many, many stories of his adventures. 

He and Mom rented a house, and later, bought a small farm. The bills got paid, and he was able to, in his words, “put some of it away” in savings. Dad didn’t own his farm yet, but he could keep up with the mortgage, and he had benefits: a good health plan, a retirement plan, and vacation time. With his financial obligations, Dad couldn’t buy a new vehicle, but he bought used cars one after another. He fixed each one up and kept fixing and driving it until it broke beyond fixing. He began to expand his “hobby” farm. Farming was his first love, and he wanted nothing more than to own his land and prosper on it. Dad spent every free minute away from work, including vacation time, building his dream. People had time to do that, back then.

Mom stayed home and raised kids. When we were a little older, she could have gone to work, but she didn’t have to. They had enough income from Dad’s job, so we milked the cows, drank as much skim milk as we wanted, fed what was left over to the calves and pigs, and sold the cream. There was plenty to do on the farm, and Mom took care of the animals while Dad was away working in the mines.

We were middle class. Dad chose our lifestyle, which wasn’t the easiest, and to be honest, it was considered odd for the times, but our situation was steadily improving. Our family of five lived comfortably on one income. The breadwinner of the family sometimes worked a little overtime, but not too often, and hardly ever beyond fifty hours. The breadwinner’s job gave the family opportunities to raise its standard of living while providing Dad enough time off to enjoy the company of his wife and kids and pursue other interests.

It was not a perfect life. Farming in Northern Minnesota on little fields cut out of forests was hard work. We didn’t have a hay bailer, or even a good tractor. Our “tractor” was a doodlebug, a Nineteen Twenty-something Ford Model T engine and transmission adapted to a second transmission and rear end of a truck, vintage 1930’s, brand unknown. Dad and I mowed hay together. He pulled a horse mower, which I rode and operated. We raked it in a similar manner, with a buck rake that dumped it into windrows. We went back later with the rake, bunched the windrows, and then hauled it loose on a two-wheeled trailer with a hayrack on it. We used pitchforks to move hay and stack it in a fenced yard by the barn.

We didn’t have indoor plumbing or running water, so laundry day was a tremendous amount of work for Mom. She carried water buckets from a pump to the house, heated it on either a wood cook stove or a gas range, and then washed clothes in an old Sears wringer washer. We didn’t have a phone, either. That made us feel a little isolated at times, but comfortably insulated also, from the business of town life.

In the early 1960’s most people neither appreciated nor put up with such inconveniences, but country living had its beautiful moments too. Dad maintained two huge gardens, tilling them frequently and weeding them meticulously. They were located right beside the gravel road that ran by our place, one on the north side of the house, and one on the south side. When we didn’t have rain for long periods, we had to water the gardens, but because Dad was always afraid of the well going dry, we hauled water in fifty gallon barrels on a trailer from a river two miles away, and with pails of river water, we went carefully, gently, row by row, watering each plant. On the cool midsummer evenings, when the corn was getting tall and the beet rows and bean rows and carrots and peas and cucumber plants and squash plants and everything else was screaming out a glorious green in the twilight, and when bright blue little potato blossoms bloomed, we knew we were in a good place.

Mom had three brothers who visited frequently and behaved strangely. They were all veterans of World War II and worked as iron miners, like Dad. They’d grown up on a little farm not twenty miles from ours, and they would just come out at different times to walk around and remember what it was like. “How’s the old Model T running?” they’d ask. “We used to have a chicken coop just like this,” they’d say, or, “Our barn was made of logs too, and that’s just how we’d stack the hay.” At times, they’d even become a little emotional with sentiment, but that was embarrassing to them, so usually, they didn’t say much at first arrival. They just wore these dreamy little smiles and walked around a bit. Then they came in and visited a while.

Mom would fix a lunch for them, and maybe a neighbor or two would drop in, and maybe someone would bring a little wine. These kinds of visits were rare, but pretty regular. We kids would sometimes pause from our play and greet the people, but we learned that it was usually best to leave mom’s brothers alone when they were in that dreamy mood. Uncle George was particularly interesting. He used to come out just to lie down under a tree and take naps. He said the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, and the buzz of insects gave him the best rest in the world.

Our nearest neighbors were a mile or so away. Another much less frequent visitor owned land on the adjoining forty. He wasn’t middle class; he was upper middle class. We’ll call him Mr. D. He didn’t live out there beside us, but he had a small hunting cabin on a forty-acre field that had been cut out of the woods. He owned a car dealership in town, much further off, about fifteen miles away, and we’d very seldom see him. He let Dad cut the hay off his field two or three times a year. He had a garden out there, too. We had a devil of a time keeping our cows fenced up and out of both his garden and ours.

Once your neighbor’s cows get a taste of garden plants, they look for any weakness in the barbed wires and pry their way under or over them if they can. If one staple pulls loose, they’re quickly out of the pasture and in the garden eating your cabbages. That’s when Mr. D. would come to visit.

Mr. D. was an understanding neighbor, though, and he and Dad got along pretty well. Eventually, after the cows had eaten Mr. D’s turnips and cabbages and lettuce a few times, we put four or five barbed wires, instead of the standard two or three, on the fence separating our properties, and the cows ceased to be a problem.

By word of mouth through the car dealer and my uncles, news got out about our old-fashioned little farm nestled in the trees, and you know what they say, “If you build it, they will come.” People actually took country drives, particularly on quiet summer evenings, to come and gawk. There was nothing special about our place from our standpoint, but many of the townsfolk were no doubt just as consumed by sentiment as my uncles were, looking at the ancient Model T, sometimes even seeing Dad or me cranking it up or driving it, backing the mower or rake or trailer to park it under the trees. They would admire the straight fences, the well-kept little lawn in front of the house, the huge round haystacks near the log barn farther back in the woods, the chickens running free, and the beautiful, fragrant gardens.

Dad resented them a little. They didn’t mean any harm. They just knew of the place and went out driving on a pleasant evening to have a look. But once in a while, they’d sneak up on him. Maybe the wind would be blowing and the birds would be singing in the soft summer twilight, and he’d be squatting in the garden with his back toward the road, farting, spitting tobacco juice, maybe blowing snot out of a nostril once in a while, while picking beans or carrots, or watering, or weeding, and talking to himself, constantly. Then he’d stand up and turn around and see two cars full of people, not fifty feet away, sitting there gawking at him, engines idling almost silently. “Cheesus!” he’d say. “Dey scare da hell out of a guy! Ya, ya! Dey just come out to look. Dey t’ink it’s nice, but dey t’ink it’s all easy, too. Dey got no idea how much work a man does to keep it up!”

Dad milked the cows in the mornings, either before leaving for work when he was on day shifts in the mines, or after returning home from working nights. Mom and I helped. We did the evening milking and chores when Dad worked afternoons. We lived simply, but we ate well. Pay checks came in. When we needed medical care, we had it. I was personally hospitalized for tonsillitis, bronchitis, a mysteriously high white blood cell count, and whooping cough. But I survived all of that because of the good medical care available to us. Our lives showed promise. Soon we would have a new well, an electric water pump, hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, and a genuine septic tank. The farm was in operation, bringing in only small cream checks so far, but it looked like we would be able to continue our slow climb upward.

America's Middle Class, DOA II: "The Project"

A couple years ago, my stepdaughter came home from school announcing she needed a large Styrofoam ball, some bulletin board tacks with various-colored little barrel-shaped plastic heads, and some pipe cleaners, to make a model of a molecule for a science project. I think she also needed some “tag board,” or “poster board,” and a few markers. We found all of these items at one of those “Marts.” I was a little surprised that it totaled about $10.

At home, she assembled the model. She knew exactly what she was doing; she took only about five minutes to build it, and it was beautiful. She found some information and illustrations on the internet for the poster board display. Her mother, a librarian, kept an eye on her to make certain she paraphrased language and used and documented sources properly.

My stepdaughter also insisted on spending a little extra time on the poster board headlines. She selected an interesting font and multiple colors for the letters. She sized and re-sized several versions of the various headings and subheadings and printed them out a couple times to make them look just right. She used scissors and a tube of school glue to cut out and attach the illustrations, headlines, captions, and blocks of printed script. The poster, too was beautiful.

The total time spent on the project, including the trip to Kmart to pick up supplies, was about an hour and a half to two hours. The rest of the evening she watched some of her favorite episodes of Lost on rented DVD’s. Educational mission accomplished by a typical middle class American family. 

The whole experience planted the seed of a thought in me. It sprouted, took root, and spread. It is now an infestation in my brain! It is a frightening truth. This story is my best effort to gather it up, process, package, and tell that truth. 

This thought began with a memory from my adolescence when I had to complete a project of similar importance for my English class. I was about fourteen years old. We were doing a journalism unit and were instructed to find samples of different sorts of writing in various newspapers (editorial pieces, feature stories, entertainment columns, comics, and so forth), cut them out, paste them onto pages, label them, and write brief descriptions of them. I believe we had to find a minimum of three examples of each.

Times were not good at home financially. They hadn’t always been that way, but it so happened that things were particularly difficult then. Dad had been laid off his job in the iron mines. He was trying to make our farm into a paying venture, but money was scarce. If he had three and a half bucks in his pocket from cream checks, he would spend two and a half of it on groceries and put a dollar’s worth of gas in the car. That would sometimes boost the gas gauge needle very near to the half full mark. It was enough to get him where he had to go.

We didn’t expect Christmas presents that year, and then someone from a church who knew of our situation put us on a list, and we were given a box of groceries, some clothing items, and even toys for the younger two kids and me. We were all surprised and extremely grateful. We didn’t usually eat much ice cream or candy, and we didn’t go to movies during those days. We didn’t get a newspaper, but neighbors and relatives would drop off the Sunday paper after reading it. Sometimes we’d end up with two or three copies of papers brought over during the week. They were good for reading and starting fires in the wood stove. (That purpose for newspapers, along with wrapping fish and masking for painting projects, is not commonly found among the “seven purposes” listed in journalism textbooks.) Most of the papers were weeks old by the time I sat down to cut out stories, but that did not matter in the least.

I had procrastinated; I admit it. I could have started the project a couple days earlier, but I’d had other schoolwork too, and I really never realized how complicated this project could turn out to be for a kid in my situation. It sounded simple enough. I was confident I could finish this in one evening. I set to work finding the various items. I knew the virtues of brevity for a project like this one, and I sought out the shortest possible editorials, the tiniest cartoons, and the littlest straight features and news stories. I organized them and piled them up.

I had to arrange these on pages, but I couldn’t find a clean sheet of unlined paper in the house anywhere. I did have an old notebook with about twenty empty pages of college ruled lines left in it. The corners of the pages were rounded, and I knew the lines and those corners, which reduced the size of the pages, would create a mess for my teacher as he put my project in the pile with the other kids’, but it was going to have to do. I tore them out, very carefully, and cut the torn fringes and holes off the sides of the pages as straight as I could.

The project required a cover page and a table of contents. We could use only one side of each page, and we were encouraged to arrange the articles in appealing ways. We were shown how to add a brief description. We were allowed to use terminology from out textbooks in describing the articles, but we were warned that plagiarism would be graded down severely, and that paraphrasing was essential.

We were also told to type our descriptions, or print very clearly, in black ink.

We had no typewriter, but I found three pens. The black ink pen was low on ink and skipped, so I couldn’t use it. The other two wrote in shades of blue, so I chose the one that wrote darker blue. It would have to do.

I set to work writing my descriptions. I began, as kids that age do, by reading the descriptions in the book, paraphrasing with synonyms inside my head, and attempting to ink draft directly to the page. When you make a mistake in ink, you have only a few choices: throw away and start over, use white-out, or erase carefully by putting a little drop of spit on the end of an eraser and rubbing softly, but be careful! Rub too hard or use too much spit, and you’ll make holes. 

I wore out an eraser and tore a couple of my limited number of precious pages and had to throw them away. I was more careful how much spit I used on the rest of them, and did a little better. Toward the end, I got much smarter. I began writing my descriptions out in pencil on other scraps of used paper, on the cover of the notebook, inside and out, on an old envelope or two, on anything, creating rough drafts first. Then I’d try to copy those onto my pages. I completed all of these brief descriptions, arranging them on the lower right corner of each page. I can’t remember how many pages the project required, exactly. I think we had to include ads of certain kinds, and I think news stories were subdivided into categories such as “local,” “state,” “regional,” “national,” and “international.” But it seems to me that the final project was about twelve pages long.

I decided it would be best to wait and paste my articles on the pages only after the descriptions were finished. Each page needed a heading, thus: “EDITORIALS,” “FEATURES,” “STRAIGHT NEWS,” etc. I wasted a couple more sheets of paper trying to write fancy, outlined, block letters and coloring them in with ink at first, but I gave up on that eventually. I had to rewrite the descriptions from pages I had ruined onto my dwindling supply of blank sheets of notebook paper, and just printed the headings carefully. They were poorly centered for the most part, not to mention clumsy and out of proportion. And they were in blue ink, but they would have to do.

It came time to paste the articles onto the pages. I might have used cellophane tape if we’d had some, but we didn’t. And we didn’t have “store-bought” paste, so I mixed up some flour paste. Now you see where this is going, don’t you?

Perhaps you don’t. Try it sometime. Put a little flour in a bowl and add water. Try to make the paste as creamy smooth as you can. Paste paper onto paper, let it dry, and see what you get. It will look something like the original copy of the Magna Carta, right after King John scribbled his name on it and crumpled it into a little ball before throwing it at the people who’d forced him to sign. It is a little known story, but thus was the Magna Carta forever disfigured.

Well, OK, I don’t know if King John did that exactly, but if he did, the Magna Carta, crumpled and re-straightened, is exactly how every single page looked when it dried out. That alone was enough to make a junior high kid cry. The stack of twelve sheets was going to be over an inch tall. I was a big kid, though. It was just going to have to do. I refused to cry.

But then I did when I pasted the editorials onto the page I’d painstakingly labeled “FEATURES.” It was three o’clock in the morning by that time. I sobbed. I couldn’t help it. So as not to wake Mom and Dad, I sobbed very quietly, but very, very hard, and stained a number of pages with spit and snot and tears, including the cover page of my un-crumpled Magna Carta.

After I gathered what little was left of my senses, I cut out my mistake and pasted it onto the last clean page of notebook paper in the house. And I labeled it correctly, and I copied the description again, and it looked pretty good until it dried. Then that page looked like the Magna Carta worked over twice. I cleaned up my mess and went to bed about four o’clock.

I was unbelievably fortunate back then because I was ignorant. But I’m not anymore.

When I saw the beautifully stenciled headings and the immaculate typing on the pages being handed in by the other kids, I was fortunate, because I didn’t know how their advantages, having a typewriter and white-out and many, many clean sheets of typing paper to start over on after they’d made mistakes, and good paste, and someone in the house to maybe type a couple of the descriptions for you after you’d drafted them, made their work much easier, so they could watch a little TV after dinner and get to bed before eleven o’clock.

I was ignorant enough not to recognize any of that. So I was very fortunate to feel, not angry, and not even jealous of the other kids’ advantages, but merely ashamed.

Some lunatics today would tell you that I was fortunate for other reasons, that my experience was a true learning experience; that, in fact, I learned more than the other kids because I was forced to work independently and use my imagination and ingenuity, while they were not. Some would even tell you that, even if I’d given up and quit and never handed the project in, I’d still be ahead of them all because I’d have learned more, and that it wouldn’t have mattered, because life is not about a grade or advantages enjoyed by some. Let’s extend this stupidity: The lunatics would say that, as long as you engage in quality learning, even if you don’t graduate from high school, you’ll be fine.

People who say so are lunatics indeed. Life in this country is all about advantages and disadvantages. It’s all about grades; it’s all about graduating. Most importantly, it’s all about self-respect.

When I was asked to pass my work forward, I decided I just wouldn’t. I didn’t want the other kids seeing what a mess I’d made of my project. I thought about taking my work out of the room and throwing it in the nearest garbage can, but I hung around at the end of class, after most kids had left the room, walked up to Mr. Hall’s desk, and handed my paper to him. “Thanks,” he said.

That response is a remarkable detail to me now. He just took my work and said “Thanks,” with absolutely nothing further. I don’t know why he didn’t joke about the Magna Carta styled parchment. He must have known. He must have been aware of my poverty and my lack of resources and the efforts I was making. Maybe he’d been poor once. Maybe as a young kid, he’d found it necessary to use a little flour paste himself. I was lucky to have Mr. Hall as a teacher.

The following week, the projects were handed back. There was a little red “B-” written on the front cover, in between a couple stains. I wonder if Mr. Hall ever guessed the origin of those stains.

My stepdaughter’s project was a mild inconvenience for a middle class household. She did beautiful work. I was glad for her, and glad for myself, too. I was a middle class parent. I had been a long time getting there. (I count my arrival in the middle to have occurred only recently, incidentally, within the past five years or so.)

But I also thought to myself, what do the poor kids do nowadays when an extra dollar or two in the family is always spent on essentials like milk or bread, and there’s no computer or printer at home, and the library is a mile or two away, and it’s five below zero outside? And, from among the teachers and other professionals that claim to be part of today’s so-called “middle class,” who really cares anyway?