When you have three kids, you burn through so much milk you may actually be better off owning a cow rather than buying it. Of course, that isn't true, and that opinion comes from reality. I have owned cows. I have no idea how dairy farmers make any money at all.
Anyway, the milk that we provide at no cost to our kids is the stuff with seemingly the least amount of chemicals put in it post-udder. This milk is not available at a grocery store here in Red Wing; you have to get it at a small gas station on hiway 61. I usually get up at 5:00 AM or so a few mornings a week and run down, buy milk, maybe a newspaper and bring it all home.
A small gas station at 5-6:00 AM is a different world than it is throughout the rest of the day. All of the customers in a small gas station at 6:00 AM are on their way home from work (third shift) or on their way to work, and a great many of them are what they now term "the working poor". I stand there, with them, in the shirt that I slept in, and see that it's interesting little window into a world where I once lived. A world that paid $8 an hour, a world where you ran out of money the day before payday no matter how frugal you tried to be. A world where a $800 car repair was a huge and almost insurmountable problem. Where the future was more drudgery.
How I got from there to here is because of providence and a man named Tim Webnectarington. Long story.
I realized the other day that I had actually been homeless at one point back then. In 1983 or 1984 I slept in a friend's decrepit storage garage/barn for a while and showered, I don't know, wherever. It never occurred to me then and it hadn't since that I was homeless, when in fact I did not have a home. I was just sleeping in a storage garage with no power and no plumbing. It didn't seem like such a big deal then, and the major problem at the time was trying to entice women to return to it with me after the bars closed.
I can stand there in line and look at the people and recognize what they do by the remains of the day on their clothes, the dust from drywall, the cement on their boots, hair net in their back pocket. Or the rumbled clothes signaling that they have no home besides their car. I have been all of those places, scrambling for money, trying to get not just ahead but to make it until next week.
And I am grateful.
Anyway, the milk that we provide at no cost to our kids is the stuff with seemingly the least amount of chemicals put in it post-udder. This milk is not available at a grocery store here in Red Wing; you have to get it at a small gas station on hiway 61. I usually get up at 5:00 AM or so a few mornings a week and run down, buy milk, maybe a newspaper and bring it all home.
A small gas station at 5-6:00 AM is a different world than it is throughout the rest of the day. All of the customers in a small gas station at 6:00 AM are on their way home from work (third shift) or on their way to work, and a great many of them are what they now term "the working poor". I stand there, with them, in the shirt that I slept in, and see that it's interesting little window into a world where I once lived. A world that paid $8 an hour, a world where you ran out of money the day before payday no matter how frugal you tried to be. A world where a $800 car repair was a huge and almost insurmountable problem. Where the future was more drudgery.
How I got from there to here is because of providence and a man named Tim Webnectarington. Long story.
I realized the other day that I had actually been homeless at one point back then. In 1983 or 1984 I slept in a friend's decrepit storage garage/barn for a while and showered, I don't know, wherever. It never occurred to me then and it hadn't since that I was homeless, when in fact I did not have a home. I was just sleeping in a storage garage with no power and no plumbing. It didn't seem like such a big deal then, and the major problem at the time was trying to entice women to return to it with me after the bars closed.
I can stand there in line and look at the people and recognize what they do by the remains of the day on their clothes, the dust from drywall, the cement on their boots, hair net in their back pocket. Or the rumbled clothes signaling that they have no home besides their car. I have been all of those places, scrambling for money, trying to get not just ahead but to make it until next week.
And I am grateful.