Faster horses
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
- Messages
- 30,239
- Reaction score
- 1,423
Perspective
There's a story told about an elderly lady in Arkansas. The state voted
to increase welfare payments to indigents. Hoping for a tear-jerker
story, a television interviewer went into the back hills where many
welfare recipients lived.
The old woman he chose to interview lived in a one-room shack: drafty in
winter; stifling in summer. Her bed was a few rough planks nailed
together, with a pine-needle mattress. A couple thin blankets, and a
fireplace, did little to protect her from the cold.
Her furniture, a table and two chairs, were fashioned from the same
rough wood as her bed. Some shelves held a few cans of food from the
general store, a three mile walk down the road. Several jars of
preserves and a few squash completed her larder.
She had no fridge or freezer. The fireplace provided heat for cooking.
With no phone or television her only connection with the outside world
was an old radio that pulled in two or three local stations on a good
day.
The old woman had one convenience, running water. A crystal clear stream
gurgled a short distance behind her home.
A small garden near her back door provided fresh vegetables during the
summer, and some squash and turnips for the winter. A tidy flower garden
brightened the front of her house.
The television crew arrived and set up their big expensive cameras.
Their mobile station broadcast pictures of the woman and the place she
called home.
Eventually the interviewer asked the old woman, "If the government gave
you $200 more each month, what would you do with it?"
Without hesitation the woman replied, "I'd give it to the poor."
-----------------------------
She is the type of person America on which America was built.
There's a story told about an elderly lady in Arkansas. The state voted
to increase welfare payments to indigents. Hoping for a tear-jerker
story, a television interviewer went into the back hills where many
welfare recipients lived.
The old woman he chose to interview lived in a one-room shack: drafty in
winter; stifling in summer. Her bed was a few rough planks nailed
together, with a pine-needle mattress. A couple thin blankets, and a
fireplace, did little to protect her from the cold.
Her furniture, a table and two chairs, were fashioned from the same
rough wood as her bed. Some shelves held a few cans of food from the
general store, a three mile walk down the road. Several jars of
preserves and a few squash completed her larder.
She had no fridge or freezer. The fireplace provided heat for cooking.
With no phone or television her only connection with the outside world
was an old radio that pulled in two or three local stations on a good
day.
The old woman had one convenience, running water. A crystal clear stream
gurgled a short distance behind her home.
A small garden near her back door provided fresh vegetables during the
summer, and some squash and turnips for the winter. A tidy flower garden
brightened the front of her house.
The television crew arrived and set up their big expensive cameras.
Their mobile station broadcast pictures of the woman and the place she
called home.
Eventually the interviewer asked the old woman, "If the government gave
you $200 more each month, what would you do with it?"
Without hesitation the woman replied, "I'd give it to the poor."
-----------------------------
She is the type of person America on which America was built.
