Thought 14JAN2009

OUT OF A JAM
It was 1933. I had been laid off from my part-time job and could no longer make my contribution to the family larder. Our only income was what mother could make by doing dressmaking for others. Then mother was sick for a few weeks and unable to work. The electric company came out and cut off the power when we couldn't pay the bill. The gas company cut off the gas. Then the water company. But the Health Department made them turn the water back on for sanitation reasons. The cupboard got very bare. We had a vegetable garden and were able to cook some of its produce on a campfire in the back yard.

Then one day my younger sister came skipping home from school saying, "We're supposed to bring something to school tomorrow to give to the poor." Mother started to blurt out, "I don't know of anyone who is any poorer that we are," when her mother, who was living with us at the time, shushed her with a hand on her arm and a frown.

"Eva," she said, "if you give that child the idea that she is 'poor folks' at her age, she will be 'poor folks' for the rest of her life. There is one jar of that home-made jelly left. She can take that." Grandmother found some tissue paper and a little bit of pink ribbon with which she wrapped our last jar of jelly and sis tripped off to school the next day proudly carrying her "gift to the poor." After that, if there ever was a problem in the community, she just naturally assumed that she was supposed to be part of the solution.
Edgar Bledsoe - extracted from 'A cup of chicken soup for the soul', Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Barry Spilchuk, Health Communications, Inc., 1996

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