My Politically Incorrect Statement

“Give a man to fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” Author Unknown

I believe that people who work hard should be rewarded. Sometimes we all need a little help and I am not against situational charity. I am, however, against enabling people to adopt charity as a lifestyle. I myself have been the recipient of governmental charity. I wanted to attend college and even though I had no financial assets, I was able to apply for financial aid. Through a combination of work study, grants, and student loans I was able to attend a state supported university. My father passed away while I was in college and I received survivor benefits from Social Security until I graduated. I am very grateful for this assistance; however, once I graduated, my future was up to me.

All of us should be appalled at the idea to “share the wealth”. I am a responsible citizen and I understand the need to pay taxes in order to support my community, state, and nation. Certain financial needs of our nation must be met by our tax dollars; however, in my opinion, that does not include supporting citizens who will not work. In order to “share the wealth”, a disproportionate amount of people are forced to “share the load”. My standard of living is compromised because of people who don’t contribute. Let’s just say that I can be a little selfish about sharing, but that is my right. When I participate in charities, they should be the ones of my choosing, not those the government dictates. I believe if you don’t work, you don’t eat. While I acknowledge that some people are sick or disabled, far too many people employ a myriad of excuses to remain at the mercy of government assistance or charity handouts.

One idea that contributes to this problem is the “I want ________” syndrome. The chasm between needs and wants spans a distance the width of the Grand Canyon. Popular culture and the celebrity loving generations seduce people into coveting a lifestyle far beyond the reality of their financial balance sheets. I love to read the Sunday paper. The colorful ads are quite breathtaking. Many times I have found myself out shopping with the goal to purchase something I saw on Sunday. For several months I was housebound and unable to shop. I discovered that I didn’t usually need the items featured in those ads. I consider myself to be of above average intelligence and yet, I have easily fallen for these marketing ploys. What manner of defense does someone who is uneducated and easily manipulated have? Surely, they have been forced into foreclosure and credit card default because they were unable to resist the song of the material girl siren. Should I pay the penalties for those people? The socialist mindset says “yes”. The answer lies perhaps in tighter regulations on credit cards policies, lenders, banks, but not a higher tax rate for those of us who have not defaulted on our obligations.

The adage, “live within your means” sounds trite and old fashioned, but truly offers the best advice for our country today.

A Weighty Issue

Some of you are probably thinking that my blog entries are too long. I know, writing for me is a lot like eating popcorn, I can’t stop until the bowl is empty. One of my college professors told me I should try to write more like Hemingway and less like Dickens, but you know what? I really don’t like Hemingway all that much. Most of the time, I want to know more, not less, so if you can only skim my articles, that’s okay, or try my foodie blog, those posts are shorter. : -)

I wish I were thinner. I know we all think that, but every year, at every milestone, I think, “next year will be better.” The problem is that in two years I will be 50, and I am still trying to accomplish that which I started before age 30…..

My family is divided on the issue of weight, oh what the heck, let’s just call it what it is, fat! My mother is a little bitty thing and was obviously selfish with those genes. My father was tall and broad, but not fat, in fact as a young man, he was very skinny (think Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld); however, I got my body genes from my father’s mother. She died five years before I was born, but in her pictures she is short and wide with a built in shelf, just like me. My oldest brother was skinny when he was young and most of the time now, he is just a little pudgy. He is one of those people who can stop eating ice cream for a month and lose weight. My other brother is like me. He was once very athletic, but after starting an office job, developed a weight problem. And like me, right now he is on the “up” side. We have both tried every reasonable diet and a few unreasonable ones, yet we always come back to the same point, needing to lose more weight. We were talking the other day and I made the comment that I thought I would have an easier time recovering from an alcohol addiction than a food addiction. He agreed, having spent several months avoiding alcohol, but still not losing more than 15 or 20 pounds in the process. He said not drinking was way easier than trying to eat less food.

I wasn’t always fat. In fact, when I was sixteen I weighed 125 and at 5’5” that was the perfect weight for my frame. I can’t remember my exact age, but I remember the conversation well. Our family doctor told me that I was fat. I may have been a little pudgy around the middle, and of course the girls had made their debut in the 5th grade, making me top heavy, but he had no reason to call me fat. My already shredded self image was completely destroyed. I made my mother buy clothes that were too big for me, especially tops, and I refused to tuck my shirts into my pants because I was too fat. I started skipping lunch at school, eating Nabs or nothing at all. I was setting a dangerous pattern for my health. Throughout college, my weight fluctuated 1o to 15 pounds, and I started my adulthood around 140, a little heavy, but not even enough to worry about, that is if you were a normal person. I was so obsessed with losing those 15 pounds that my weight was up and down constantly. I was either starving myself to death or I was eating whatever I wanted, there was no happy medium for me. Once I started working in an office, my weight started to creep upward, so I continued that good/bad cycle for years.

I would like to someday resolve this issue, but I don’t know how. At this point, I have so much weight to lose (sitting around in a hospital or rehab for weeks and months didn’t help either) that I don’t know if I will ever lose anything significant. I am searching for something, the right thing to help me. I’ve prayed many times for God to take this addiction away from me. I don’t know if He is saying, “no”, or “not now”, but I am anxiously awaiting a resolution. I often wonder how things would have been different for me if that doctor had never called me fat.

Mountain Memories

A three room house with no indoor plumbing, newsprint for wallpaper, and a coal burning pot belly stove come to my mind’s eye when I think of West Virginia. My grandmother’s house stood about midway up the mountain of a valley called Derrick’s Creek; Derrick for my great grandmother’s family. Nothing of this secluded valley resembled my home in the flat, sandy soil of eastern North Carolina. The winding roads had been carved through solid rock and often yielded to rock slides and crumbling or nonexistent shoulders. Bridges appeared from nowhere, spanning over white water rapids and rocky beaches. My normally keen sense of direction was disabled and I found myself unable to distinguish north, south, east, or west. The sun played hide and seek with the mountain peaks. Often this shy ball of light appeared late in the morning over the walnut trees and the dark night held no street lights or even porch lights; only moon and stars, and the dark shadows of the hills. Our well timed visits avoided the heavy rains and snow at all costs. True to the name, a creek flowed from farther up the mountain and around my grandmother’s house. A bridge, really nothing more than five or six boards nailed together, made for a small path to drive across. Any significant rainfall flooded the creek deeming the bridge “uncross able”. Sometimes we parked up at the paved road and walked the cart path up to the house. First you passed the crib. I’ve never understood shy this rickety old shed was called a crib. At this point, the only babies belonged to mouse or snake mothers who made their nests amidst the discarded household and farm paraphernalia. Once you crossed the bridge, the coal pile lay on the right and on the left an unpainted out house sat against the creek bank. I only used this under the direst of circumstances. The small house sat in a clearing of walnut and sugar maple trees. The creek meandered around the side and front of the house sculpting out a flat field that once grew corn, beans, and turnips. A stonewalled well sat to the right of the house and the fruit cellar hid beneath a huge rock that must have been too large to move from the yard. A little white and brown terrier named Trixie would announce our arrival. Once inside, the sweet smell of vanilla wafers and snuff permeated the furniture and linens. I never saw the pot belly stove burning because we only visited in the summer. To visit the hidden valley in winter would be to risk becoming snowbound. Electricity and running water to the kitchen sink modernized the old cottage filled with feather beds, wardrobes for closets, and bare light bulb fixtures. My memories of this house and the chamber pot under the bed dictate my pronunciation of the word pecan: pucahn, not peecaan.

My ancestors were from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands. I don’t know what enticed them to settle in this wild, rocky terrain. I myself would have been tempted to stay close to the ocean, but they traveled on from the east coast into the high mountains of western Virginia. Perhaps they were searching for an environment that reminded them of the lands they had abandoned back in the old country. Overall, I did not spend much time in West Virginia. We went every summer for a week or two at the most; however, the effect of these high hills has been significant. I call this my hillbilly gene. One of my legs is shorter than the other; my mother says this is for walking along side the mountains on the uneven pathways. I love the old timey bluegrass music with the sad crying fiddles and tinny banjos, and every so often I must answer the call of the mountains for a visit. One day I would like to visit the site of my grandmother’s little house. Some time after she passed away, the families of Derrick’s Creek sold to a company that developed a golf course and modern neighborhood. Only the name retains the heritage of the Derricks, Wilkinsons, Workmans, and Kings, but wherever we are we carry the hillbilly gene and the memory of the families of Derrick’s Creek.

For Verna Evel Wilkinson King

I remember mountains, wildflowers in the summer

Vanilla wafers and a thick old dusty Bible

Chilly nights and hot sticky days

I remember an old walnut tree, strong and unyielding, the rose bush full of sharp weapons, wounding those who dared to steal the blooms

And Grandma

Happy tears streamed down the wrinkles of her aged beauty as she reached out to hug me and slap my back

I loved her then, the long grayed braids that wrapped her head, the brown weathered hands, worn with pain and hard work, the lined brow, her dark knowing eyes

What lies ahead in this world is dark and scary, but she was always strong and unafraid, as firm as the mountain on which she lived

I look back and search for that strength she possessed, I need it now

I cannot find it, if only I were like her, like that old tree that stood in her yard, decades, old, enduring life with its unending, howling winds

Yet her memory stays within my soul and lives forever

Death cannot separate the memories from the living

The strong face without fear the obstacles and trials thrust upon them

They will receive rest and glory at their finish

I smile to think of her glory

Even though I often feel unworthy, I accept her legacy of strength and stubborn determination and pledge to be strong

Like Grandma.

November 11, 1977