Joe,
Every time I read one of your articles, I think, he's outdone himself this time, but this one (Adam Smith Meets Cousin Ronnie's Boy) is exceptionally exceptional. My son-in-law is a high school teacher, teaching physics and chemistry. About half of your article could have been written by him. To start from the beginning of the article, you say you were born in 1946. I was born in 1925 and had my first child in 1948. The doctor's bill was $75.00. Since we didn't have any medical insurance, I paid the doctor some money every visit, so she was paid for when she arrived. We saved money for the hospital bill so we were able to pay it when the time came. I stayed in the hospital 5 days for the princely sum of $51.50.
The time between 1925 and 1947 was quite different from your life. We lived just outside the city limits of a very small town and had no electricity, no running water, and, of course, no indoor plumbing, but, since we didn't know any better, we were happy. Our house was on a large lot, so we had a vegetable garden, had chickens and eggs to eat and a cow for milk and a pig for meat, and my dad had a job,so we were well off compared to some of our neighbors.
This is Georgia, which is the real south, not Mistah Jeffah-sun's Virginia. In spite on my humble beginnings, one of my daughters received a doctorate from Mistah Jeffah-sun's University and taught one year at William & Mary, which was the highlight of her life. She then taught medieval history at Georgia College and State University. We were never members of the upperclass, but my children and grandchildren got good educations and good jobs. We don't associate with the people who consider themselves the upperclass. We don't care to. We have plenty of friends in our class who would give you the shirt off their backs. They're my kind of people.
So, I guess my point is if you work hard and your children work part-time while they're in college, you can have a decent life, although I'm not sure how long it will last. We're losing our freedoms more and more every day and there doesn't seem to be an end to this so-called war on terrorism, so I don't see any peace in our immediate future. Since I'm 80, I won't have too much time to worry about it, but my descendants will be paying off the national debt for the rest of their lives.
Keep up the good work.
Mildred
Elberton, Georgia
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Dearest Mildred,
Thank you so much for sharing your life. Actually, for the first 13 years of my life or so we lived the same way you did as a child. We had an outhouse, slaughtered a couple of hogs, had one helluva garden and canned, cured hams, etc. This was at the family farm, which got electricity in 1958 and indoor plumbing about 1965, as I remember.
We "moved to town" as they used to say then, when I was in the sixth grade. The town, Winchester, Virginia is where the first Bageants settled in 1745 -- so I have roots both on the family farm (the land in that neck of the woods came from a revolutionary war ancestor who was paid in "land bounty" for his service in the continental army -- although my grandparents purchased their farm land later as a young couple, because, surprise! the wealthier ones left in the South (wealth being relative in the Reconstruction Era, any money beat no money, and many of the wealthy had their money in Baltimore banks up north as a hedge) had somehow managed to grab up all the land after the Civil War, when folks were so poor they had to sell it.
Anyway, like you, I won't be around too much longer to see it get any worse, as I have an ultimately terminal lung disease. But by god I can raise hell for at least a few more years anyway. Hopefully from outside the country at least part of the time in a tiny village in Central America, mainly because a person can live on $400 a month there in the sun. I plan to give away the book royalties to poor people in the third world. In fact, I have already started that in a small way. (See my Under the Blue Mango).
Personally, I don't think many working people in future generations are going to get much of the Social Security that they bought and paid for as an insurance policy (nobody seems to remember that part, that it is not a hand-out!) because it has been looted by politicians practically from the day it was created. While Roosevelt was nowhere near the humanitarian liberals like to believe, he did many things for working folks, and he did them as much to preserve capitalism and stave public unrest as he did for humanistic reasons. It worked, and it is a testimonial to good public policy. And despite looting, it is STILL strong enough to go on much longer than the Bush administration wants younger folks to believe. But I won't rage on about that one!
Thank you so much, my dear, for taking your valuable time to write. Letters from readers are my biggest reward for writing.
In friendship,
Joe
