Twenty-five percent of the American workforce was unemployed. Soup lines prevailed throughout the nation. Veterans of World War I, the war to end all wars, marched on Washington, D. C. demanding the pensions they were promised by the government. They were badly mistreated by the likes Douglas MacArthur. Millionaires were bankrupted by the market collapse. Grown men who were previously employed in good positions were selling apples on street corners or begging for a few cents as they held out their tin cups, awaiting the generosity of anyone with a penny to spare.
In the farmlands of the middle west, dust storms destroyed corps and laid the fields barren for years to come. The Okies (poor people from Oklahoma and the dust bowl) moved west to the sunshine of California, hoping to find some work and keep their families from freezing from the blistery cold plains winters.
Men took to riding freight trains and setting up camps along the way – always looking for some employment to send money home to their wives and children since welfare would not help a family if an able-bodied male resided in the home, even though there was no labor for him to apply his body.
What did we do? We loved one another. We shared what meager food we had with total strangers off the streets. Why did we do that? Because we, as a nation, knew that to survive, we had to stick together – to share our shelter and kitchen tables and the warmth of our hearts. In my grandmother’s house, folks we called aunts and uncles who were no actual kind of ours. Thousands of grandmothers found a place at the table for someone less fortunate. Because we shared and cared, we survived and went on to become the strongest and freest country in the history of the world.
THE COVID PANDEMIC
We have experienced an epidemic more violent and more killing than the notorious Flue epidemic of 1917-1918. Millions of lives have been lost. In America, the government came to our aid during the first year of the onslaught. Unemployment checks flowed into our coffers; evictions were halted. People were not thrown out into the streets. How did we react?
We have become fat and sassy. We no longer love one another. Hate pervades the population. The economy is now booming. We have inflation due to the lack of available products. Imports from China (where most of our electronic products come from) are backed up at our ports because there is a lack of stevedores to unload the ships and a shortage of truck drivers to carry the product to its intended destination. Why is that? We have grown lazy. Instead of appreciating the help from the government, we have become redolent and lazy and expectant of more. It is a labor market. Jobs are begging. Instead of picking up where we left off, we want more. Selfishness leads to greed. Greed leads to envy, dissatisfaction and blame. We pick fights with anybody who disagrees with us or shares a different point of view. We have lost our sense of neighborliness. We claim to want privacy – a house for one that is suitable for a family of 10. Are crazy? We hate our leaders. We blame everybody else for our false miseries. The blame belongs to the face in the mirror. We have lost our moral compass. I ask one question “We were better off as a people, during the Great Depression or now during the COVID era?” I know my answer. How about you?
Raymond Strait – Hemet
Rusty Strait
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