If We Make it Through December

"...everything's gonna be all right, I know."
Those are lyrics from a song written and originally performed by Merle Haggard, titled the same as this column.  The track was released in 1973.
Though the subject matter deals with a blue-collar man dealing with the hardships of being laid off from his factory job at Christmastime, it also offers a glimmer of hope once he's through the Christmas holiday and the cold winter months, hoping to even resettle in a warmer climate.
Despite the bleakness, the protagonist has an eye towards the future, even hoping that things will be better elsewhere, because "Daddy can't afford no Christmas here."
Just this past week, one of my former co-workers at the radio station blogged about the state of the public welfare system in this country and those who shamelessly take advantage of the system.
If you hadn't read it, look on my facebook wall.  Scroll down.  You'll find it.
Many things needed to be said, and she said it best.
I have never been on any kind of food stamps or public assistance in my life.  She has.  Thus, she has a hell of a lot more room to talk about the subject than I do.
Not only that, she was a second-generation welfare recipient who was able to 'break the cycle.'
It's called 'assistance' for a reason.  To assist.  To help others who are going through a tough time until they can get back on their feet.
Or, for those who are physically or mentally unable to contribute, a means to survive.
Yet I see too many of the able-bodied dependent on 'the system' to carry them.
They shamelessly laugh about the fact about how they 'beat the system'.
Well, guess what.  I have news for you.
'The system', as you call it, just beat the crap out of you and came back for seconds.
You want to beat the system?  Fine.  Here's how you do it:
First, get yourself a piece of land.  Big enough to plant a vegetable garden.
Grow your own food, including a cotton crop.  Make your own clothing.  Build your own house using wood you felled from a tree.
Supplement your diet by hunting for game.  Rabbits are fairly easy to catch.  And who doesn't like the taste of hasenpfeffer?  Deer are a little more tricky, but not altogether impossible.  Ringneck pheasant is a good source of protein.  Tastes like chicken!
Or make your own fishing rod and head to the stream.
Learn a trade.  Carpentry, electrical, masonry, metallurgy, farming.
Ever wonder why it's called a 'trade'?  Yep, we bartered one for the other!  That's what we did in the olden days before we went from worshipping in church to worshipping Fort Knox.
And get this.  After each day of 'survival' the good old-fashioned way (like with no TV cameras or Jeff Probst), the only thing you'll want to do after the sun sets is sleep.  Because you'll need it when it starts all over again the following day.
If you can truly say you live off the land and off the grid, then congratulations.  You have indeed beaten the system.
I know times are hard.  But they could be much worse.
I hear stories about people who lose their jobs and then lose their homes.
How does this happen?
By taking on more debt that you can handle.  By having too much faith in job security.  By unwillingness to shelve personal pride to the point of taking ANY job, as long as it was still a means to provide.
When I was 'relieved of my duties' at my first radio job in 1989, I didn't 'hold out' for the Pittsburgh market or another radio job.
I had student loans that were coming due.  I had outstanding credit card bills from my freshman year.  Though I still lived at home, I was obligated to repay those debts that I alone created.
I didn't run off and declare bankruptcy either.
I went and applied at retail stores, six of them, and even mustered up the courage to apply at a convenience store.  The last place I ever wanted to work.
Guess who called...and nobody else.
I had to learn to tie on an apron for my job.  Scrub floors.  Clean toilets.  Deal with drunks on the graveyard shift.  Hope to hell I didn't get robbed in the middle of the night while in the store by myself.  Block and dust aisles.  Wipe down the counter with 409 about every 15 minutes.  Measure the fuel storage tank levels.
All for $3.70 an hour.  Part-time.  I did work 40 hours a week, but no vacation or health care benefits.
And I didn't up and quit when my phone did ring two months later from a radio station with a job offer, which was again, a part-time one.
I stayed on a few months longer (and properly resigned with advance notice).  I went home tired after my shift ended each night, but I felt I earned every penny of what I made.
Ironically, I was ashamed of it.
Maybe it was that classmate from high school that saw me in there, looking at me with the saddest eyes and saying "What the hell are YOU doing here?"
When I interviewed for the new radio job, I was reluctant to tell my prospective employers that I had another job and that I was not willing to 'advertise it'.
That was at my first interview with the program director, then another with the administrative assistant, and then finally a third with her and the station owner.
He asked me "are you working now?"  I said yes.
"What is it you're doing?" he asked.
The moment of truth.  I looked towards the admin.  She smiled and said "you can tell him, it's OK."
So I did.
His reaction:  "Oh, is that all?  I thought maybe you were a bagman for the Mafia!"
After a quick chuckle, he looked me in the eye and said something I'll never forget as long as I live.
"Listen.  Don't you ever be ashamed of what you do for a living.  As long as you work hard and it's honest work, you're all right by me.  Some people are OK to sit back and collect a welfare check."
The message I send to you is this:
Work done well, and done honestly, will never be done in vain.
No matter what it is.  Whether you build the floor, stand on it as you give a presentation, or clean it afterwards, you've contributed.
You will go to bed at night knowing that you've done something useful with your day.  
When you have that sense of accomplishment, nothing more matters.



NEXT WEEK:  Christmas Cheer

Birthday Blues

As a fan of the NBC sketchcom "30 Rock", it's enjoyable viewing.
For those of you who don't follow it, one of the characters, Jack Donaghy (played brilliantly by Alec Baldwin) is the fictional head of NBC.  In one episode, where he's ribbed about recently turning 50, he takes a beat and says "50 is the new 30."
Would that mean 40 is the new 20?
Uhhh...not quite.  When most of us were 20, we spent our days buried in thick, overpriced books we'd never get back our money for, and our nights trying to convince the bouncer at the door that it's a real ID we're producing.  And our weekends puking off balconies.
In reality, we'd read the book, then forget everything a half hour later (if that), we'd be ready for bed hours before the bar closed, and if we did puke off a balcony, we'd overshoot and the end results would be far more tragic.
No...40, NOT the new 20.
Nonetheless, it's still just a number.
My wife turns 40 one week from today.  She said to me just a day or so ago "this is my last week in my 30s."
I've known my wife since she was 32.  I had just turned 36.
After being together all these years, she never ceases to amaze me.
Despite being married for almost seven years, and having a child three and a half years ago, she's still not afraid to try new things, and still enjoys the things we used to do before kids, when we have time to do them.
Sometimes things have to wait in favor of household chores or the 'honey-do' list, but we never let each other fall by the wayside.
And my wife's sense of humor isn't lost on me.
I'm holding a football-themed birthday party for Margie one week from today.  Because her birthday falls on a Sunday this year, and it's a decade marker, what better way to celebrate than to do so in front of a 50" plasma TV, with the Steelers delivering a sound thrashing (hopefully) to the hated Cleveland Browns?
My wife works as an investigator for the feds.  I told her about the party because a) she can't handle Christmas, b) she'd find out about any kind of surprise party, and c) I'm just not that good a liar.
So she knows she's getting a party.
And she'll also know that her friends aren't about to let her forget about it.
Some of the gifts of my own 40th birthday party were:  Geriatric vitamins, antacids, hemorrhoid ointment pads, a pack of Depends, and a pilsner glass with all the niceties of turning 40 on it.
And I will see that no one leaves her out of that loop too.


NEXT WEEK:  December

The Voice of the People

The election is over, and I have to say, the political climate that surrounded this year's general election seemed to be the most hostile that I've seen in years, if ever.
So you'll excuse me for the delay in writing this week's column.  It takes me a while to figure out if there's any real way to write an unbiased article concerning the outcome of this year's election.
I have been a registered Republican since I registered to vote at the age of 18.  However, I have always voted for whom I felt was the best candidate, even if it meant taking the extra time to write in a candidate from another party.
That's right.  I'm a Republican, and I have voted for a Democrat in the past.  And an Independent.
And other third-party parties as well.
I was disappointed in the outcome of this year's Presidential election, but at the same time, I got over it.
I didn't resort to the hostility some had over the fact that their candidate didn't come out on top.
We have four more years of Barack Obama, people.
Like it or not, that's the way it is.
In the words of one of my former radio colleagues, "Bummer...deal with it."
Seriously, were some of you that convinced he didn't stand a chance at re-election?
We have not had a single-term President in office since George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid in 1992 to  then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
That's going on twenty years now.
Prior to that, Jimmy Carter.
Two one-termers in 35 years.  You really have to do a bad job to not secure another term.
Or the people really have to despise you.
I prefer to see if Obama can work with the Congress he'll be faced with for the next four years.
Yes, it's bad right now.
But it could be a hell of a lot worse.
And I sure don't see anyone of the naysayers telling me they're moving to Canada making any effort to pack their bags.
Yes, we have a huge deficit in this nation's history.  But we dug our own grave years ago.  Someone had to dig us out.
To let Detroit's auto industry wither and die would have meant the loss of millions of jobs, directly AND indirectly.
Now the Big Three have learned their lesson and now run a leaner, meaner, tighter ship.
And Obama suffered the black eye from AIG's use of bailout money for executive perks.  He learned from it.
He could have pulled the troops out of the Middle East that George W. Bush put there.
And he didn't.
He wisely stayed the course until the strongest al-Qaeda leaders were killed or captured.  To do anything less would have meant the efforts after September 11th would have been in vain.
Obama has another four years to build a legacy.
He can do it.
We had a President who survived an impeachment trial, multiple sex scandals, a collapsed real estate development deal that sent people other than himself to jail, among other things.
But this man, a Democrat, was able to find a bi-partisan footing and reach across the table to his Republican colleagues and change this country for the better.
It didn't happen in four years.  It happened in eight years.
The hope for our future begins with the support we have for our country's leaders.
To those who disagree, I say this:
"Can you do better?"
Now I come back to another quote:
"If anybody's got a better idea, I'm all ears."
Yep, Ross Perot.
That said, I'M all ears.



NEXT WEEK:  Birthday Blues

Sandy Beach

I admit it, I do love the beach.
Unfortunately, the close proximity of the ocean means having to put up with hurricanes.
And it was in the news for the past couple of weeks.  Now it's all over.
Hurricane Sandy unleashed its fury on the Northeast, but fortunately for us on the western side of the Keystone State, it was more of a dalliance than a disaster.
We had some areas without power for a couple days due to some downed lines.  Basement pumpouts were keeping firefighters busy.  Electricity crews on call either slept in or were dispatched to help our more easterly neighbors.
Hurricanes have never been common in my part of Pennsylvania.  Aside from flooded roadways that all but marooned me at my hilltop house in Ford City during 2004's Hurricane Ivan, we've never had trouble with the two other close calls we've had in the past decade...Isabel in 2003 and most recently, Sandy.
This time, the lights didn't even blink.
Well, barely.  My wife reported a brief four-second interruption, but that was it.
The radio station I work for didn't even go off the air.
Schools responded by cancelling classes for the day.
I have friends in the New York City and Philadelphia areas who are still without power, and will be up until probably later on this week.
My prayers are with you folks.
New Yorkers, despite their negative reputation (a fabrication, in my opinion), are probably the most resilient people on the planet.  They have survived one of the highest murder rates in the country, the September 11th terrorist attacks, riots, gang warfare, you name it.
And they'll make it through this.
So will the folks in Philly.
And everywhere else.
Because we're Americans.
We complain about this country, the direction it's going economically, our weak foreign policy, our complacent elected leaders, and everything else under the sun.
But here's proof of our strength in numbers.
We as a people and a culture, stand united in the face of danger.
Whether it's from an enemy nation or natural disaster, we find the courage within ourselves to fight.
And win.
We've fought as a nation since 1775.  We're not about to stand still for a little bit of wind and water.


NEXT WEEK:  The People Have Spoken