Howdy friends and neighbors. Look out! It is the middle of July and we have 70 degrees and calm winds today! Plus it rained (on a few folks). Well, give global warming a day or two and we should be back in the high 90’s. Sorry about last week, I was just too wore out from popping firecrackers, boating on the lake, and birthday partying with my Grandma Nelona Campbell (she turned 80 years old) to write about anything. Despite the bobble-head media, we had a great holiday weekend. I didn’t buy the fact that the media thinks we should be in a recession or as CNN would like us to believe, a depression. Nope, I saw folks loading up to go places. It looked like people were still driving nice, new cars with plenty of toys in tow. The lake was full of boats and jet skis and travel trailers surrounded the water. Fireworks stands were selling pow-pows as fast as they could unbox them. I think a firecracker depreciates about as fast anything on the planet.
As my family enjoyed each other at Grandma’s birthday party, I started counting back to the year she was born, 1928. I hear things were a little tougher in the early thirties in Western Oklahoma. The whining media and those that buy their bull think things are tough today. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but the stories from that generation blow my mind. Today, we don’t have a clue what tough times are. I still believe that we are so blessed to have what we have. I can’t begin to think what it was like to be hungry, broke, and not knowing what was next as a dust storm blew through. I have been corrected before that most folks weren’t poor; they were flat broke. There is a difference. Being poor is a state of mind. Being broke means you have no money. Though, I can recall that my grandparents never complained that they weren’t happy. I hear countless stories about the games they played and the trouble they found. They survived on hard work and wanting a better life for the next generation.
There’s a reason I don’t watch the news. I don’t want to be drug down by it. But with the news everywhere, I laugh when I hear it. I hear on ABC radio news that the Dow is down and congress is trying to pass a bill to bail out people who can’t read a mortgage while I drive by the cell “sometimes” phone store and see people lined up around the block to buy an $800 I-phone in a $50,000 vehicle. In the thirties, people lined up around the block to get bread or something else to eat then walked back to their tent. Just be thankful for the many blessings we enjoy and take for granted today. Also, be aware and look up to and listen to real history from someone who was there. (I need to read and apply that last sentence myself.)
I’m Monte Tucker, and that’s what’s under my birthday party hat. Happy 80th Grandma!
