We CAN DO without Washington

Think about the news over the last few weeks and all the finger pointing going on right now! Who is to blame for this or that just makes me sick. My dad told me to look at my hand when I pointed my finger at someone. I did not understand until he showed me that the other 3 fingers were now pointing back at me.

Our country is now over 225 years old and just how long have we had some sort of welfare to take care of the needy? I do geneological research and the early letters I have read addressed to Washington are from widows of our wars asking for pensions for their husbands and fathers killed in the wars. The libraries have scanned these hand written letters and you can read them and the goverments response. Some did get as much as $50.00 yearly and this was a 60 year old widow with 8 children. Now this family truely needed help.

I think back when our country was being founded and expanded, there was no Washington beauracy going to the aid of all these families risking everything to find a better life. Yes some died and some succeeded. But there was not FOX' fair and balanced reporting nor CNN 360 and Anderson Cooper with a live feed back to everyone of their plight. This was not so many years ago when we did not have television nor radio nor possibilby the US mail. How did these wonderful strong people survive with Washington and without someone coming to their aid? Did they not know the risk they were taking when the started out on their trek be it short or long, it was at their own peril.

When you think about it even today, we each start out in life at our own peril! If we are lucky and have a family to help us get started, it is then we love the independence and the chance, the chance, to be the best we can be. Yes, we even have the chance of failing but that is the part that makes life so exciting. Give me and you the chance to fly or fall! Let me find my wings and if I succeed, I can enjoy a wonderful sense of achievement that surpasses all the joy I could ask for. Don't give me big brother looking over me and helping me and giving me something to dim that joy.

I think of my own life and how my dad died when I was in my third year of college. I did not know dad and mom had borrowed money on their home to help me pay for college and for dad to start a new business. I learned this after my dad passed away and mother had 2 mortgages on our home. Please know that I am not the exception but this happens to many children sometime in their quest for a better life. My mother sat down with me at 21 and showed me the two mortgages and what needed to be done. I finished that year in college and went to work that June for the company I retired from. I paid the second mortgage each month and gave my mom $25.00 a week for my expenses living at home. It does not sound like much today but that was a lot of money in 1960.

My mother was working and probably could have gotten something from Washington when my dad died. She did get a small VA check for my brother for a few months until he was 18 but that was it. Mother made it on her own. I made it on my own. My brother went to college and worked and he too made it own his own. I can only use my family as a comparison to all the people asking for handouts today as these are the only ones I know first hand without any pretense.

Can I tell you something about me. I retired after 41 plus years of working for my company and in those 41 years I never missed a payday. If I had saved all those check stubs, I would have over 2,112. I am not the exception but the rule of the kids of the post war era. We knew hard times and good times and we saw by example of how to work hard and be successful. We never looked for a handout or handup of any kind. Is our society so different from back then?

I know Katrina was bad. I know Rita was bad. But each took their chance to succeed for fail just like I did or you did. I want to help the children. I want to help the older population who had everything taken away. But you who are of able body, I ask you to do as the early Americans did and begin again. It will be hard and difficult but our country is filled with opportunity. Immigrates are still streaming into this country more than all the other countries in the world oombined looking for a chance, just a chance, to succeed in life and yes, to possibly fail. Be that American of old with a vision and a hope to make for yourself a better life. If you turn around and look, there is another man or woman standing behind you to take that chance should you turned it down. ....Jeff Nutter, Jr, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America