Government Cheese and Making Do

Aaron Rogers just got a contract of about $150 million dollars for 3 years. Let that sink in. That's $50 million  guaranteed a year. That's about $5 million a month. I have two degrees in English, 40 hours on a doctorate, and taught for 30 years. My pathetic teacher retirement is equal to a few seconds of his salary. Maybe he's going to give it all to charity instead of buying another mansion in California(he already has one), but he's no more beyond the normal salaries than some of the others we see in sports or entertainment or politics(all the members of the Senate are millionaires). Do you think he ever cuts out coupons or is excited because he just bought mulch and got 5 per cent off at Lowes?

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Learning to make do with the small amounts we regular folks have is sometimes a fun experience. At Wilson I always sponsored the Senior class and shepherded them through the process of that special year. My picture was always on the wall with the class. One year I guess a school board member decided he was tired of seeing my face after all those years, so I got word the day before school was to open that I would be Junior class sponsor that year.  No picture. It was the job of the Junior class to make money to pay for the Junior-Senior Banquet which was not a small amount. Our first way to get some bucks was to work the concession stand at the football games, so we did our first night and learned the tricks of when to put in the oil for popcorn, how to make nachos, and were proud of the accomplishment. We were to pay the school for the food items since they got them at a discount, and then we kept whatever was left. But one of the juniors came to me and said, "We're paying for cheese to make nachos, right?" Of course I answered Yes. "Well," he said, "my grandma gets those big blocks of cheese from the government. I'll bet she would give us hers to help out." Another Junior heard the conversation and said the same thing. So with a few calls an entire group of kind Wilson grandmothers descended on the Agriculture office in charge of giving out "government" cheese, even those who had never done it before and would probably not do it again and we had enough to run the concession stand for the entire football season. It was a huge help in our account.

Sometimes the way to get to a different place in life has to be connected with money. Going on your own is almost impossible. In 1845  the first German immigrants were making plans to come to the Hill Country of Texas because they had heard about a company that would get them help and give them land. In Germany times were so bad that a man could not leave his farm/land to a son unless the son bought it and paid the government a tax. So the amount they had to come up with to be part of this new, wonderful world of Texas was $240. Half of that paid their way on ship to Galveston, and the other half was in a fund which they could use once they were settled in a town that would be called New Braunfels. Cheap land would be available. The public relations campaign to encourage Germans to take part was amazing because thousands of immigrants dared the journey and the death and hardships it brought. The $240 in today's purchasing power would be about $7500. Could today's families come up with that amount in cash? Interesting idea to see what it would take to save that.

So we do with what we have, and we read the papers about people who live in a world we will never inhabit. But when we get our government cheese or discount, we can smile and say that life has many moments of satisfaction. Those moments should be celebrated.

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