Month: May 2017

Me:  Uncle Eddy!  Good to hear you.  I got your texts, so I figured I’d call.  I guess this is going to be longer?

Uncle Eddy: Charlie, I been reading that Trump budget and I’m so damned mad I could spit.  My vote has been stolen from me, cause I voted for this crap  and what a damned old fool I was.

Me: Slow down!

Uncle Eddy:  I voted cause I figured working folks would get more jobs, but anybody who’s in bad shape and don’t have no job is going to be in worse shape. He wants to chop 190 billion dollars out of aid for unemployed.   Charlie, nobody out there needs welfare if they’re working.  And that fat ass budget director, Mickey-whoever,who probably ain’t ever worked a day in his life, says it will make people get off their ass and find work.  But, Charlie, there ain’t no work. Zip. Zilch.  You’ve been out of work, kid, I know you have.  You ever wait for a handout?

Me:  Never did, Uncle Eddy.  I guess this is a classic case of the rich thinking the poor are lazy.  That goes back hundreds of years.

Uncle Eddy:  Years-schmears!  I’m talking now.  Some people needs help.  When you put my words on that Reagan cheese giveaway on your web thing, a lotta people read it and tell me I’m right.  Ain’t no way to explain how a man feels when he got to feed his kids by standing in line for a handout, and hope that it’s enough to feed them.  How the hell would someone with a rich daddy – who never done that – know how that feels?  A guy don’t collect no aid unless he’s damn far down on his luck.  It ain’t easy working the mills.  There was always long layoffs. You remember me, old Stan, your old man and Wally we was off months at a time.  No one give a damn, and we was damn glad to get government hand-outs.  Hurt to take it, but I know you remember some skimpy meals, don’t you, kid?

Me: Sadly, Eddy, I do.

Uncle Eddy:  And now these fat asses wanna cut billions out of Medicaid.  Now I got Medicare, and I thank God for it.  But them as got no money, either get Medicaid or maybe die.  Maybe the fat cats figure if enough poor people die they’ll save even more.  But them Wall Street guys get a tax break because of this.

Me:  Eddy, look.  This is only what the President wants to happen.  Congress still has to vote on it.  And I think – I hope – that any politician stupid enough to vote for this will get his fanny bounced out of office come the 2018 elections.   That is, if enough older people get off their asses and vote.

Uncle Eddy:  I hope you’re right, kid.  This time around, no one is stealing Eddy’s vote with damned lies.

 

Me:  Uncle Eddy! I was getting ready to call you.

Uncle Eddy: Just callin’ to make a point, kid.  Remember when you wrote about me and social media?  I got flack on that from everybody – kids, grand-kids, neighbors.

Me:  Sorry, Ed.  I didn’t mean to cause trouble.

UNCLE EDDY:  No – it proves my point.  That new virus-germ thing – what’s it called?   Shuttin’ down them hospitals and stuff?

Me: The Wannacry virus.

UNCLE EDDY:  That’s it.  See I was trying to make a point, kid.  So now we can connect everybody on earth to everybody else.  But why the hell is that so good?  My point back then was we don’t need the opinion of every teenage kid in our face all the time.  But everybody else thinks that’s just swell.  And now this electro-germ thing comes along and jams up all that communication and I guess it’s like a kidnapper, right?

Me:  Yep.  They hold your computer for ransom until you pay them.

UNCLE EDDY:  So there you go.  They’re shuttin’ down hospitals and companies.  So we all got connected up, all snug and lookin’ at each other’s party pictures and along comes some crooks and screws it all up.  Life just might have been better the way it used to be.

Me: How do you mean, Eddy?

UNCLE EDDY:  I mean you and I is kinfolk, right?  I call you and you call me, or sometimes you call your Aunt Marge even.  But we don’t gotta crawl up each other’s butts.  I don’t wanna send you pictures of everything I do, and I don’t wanna to see pictures of everything you do.  That’s my point – we ain’t getting’ in each other’s face all the time.

Me:  OK.  I buy it.  But what’s the harm?

UNCLE EDDY:  Charlie – you just seen it.  It’s like all of us is in this giant house now, with a gazillion rooms.  And if one dumb ass forget to lock the door, someone comes in and steals from everybody.  I ain’t no engineer, but I know that much.  If we connect everybody, then if a hoodlum attacks one of us he attacks all of us.  Cause we’re all connected.  You was a systems guy and you know that.   So we connects everybody up but we forgot we connects up every sleaze bag along with ‘em.  And now we can’t lock the door.

 

Me:  Uncle Eddy.  Glad you called.  What’s cooking?

Uncle Eddy: Well, Charlie, I’m waiting on cheese.  See everybody says Reagan was a great guy and they forget the cheese.

Me:  Not sure I follow you, Ed.

Uncle Eddy:  Remember when Reagan had a big-ass mountain of cheese and figured he’d feed the poor?

Me:  Ouch!  I remember.  It was back in the 80’s.  The government bought surplus milk from farmers and turned it into cheese.  If I recall, they had warehouses all over the country and had about 560 million pounds of cheese.

Uncle Eddy:  I ain’t so good at math no more, so how much is that?

Me:  I’d guess it would make about 4 piles, each as big as an aircraft carrier.

Uncle Eddy:  Well it pissed me off then and will again.  So Ronnie plays hero and gives it to the poor who can’t afford no better.  He could have upped their welfare, but Republicans don’t like welfare, so he give away cheese.

Me:  I guess you’re going to tell me about it.

Uncle Eddy:  Damn straight.  Things was slow at the mills,  I got laid off for the winter. Benefits wasn’t much and it was rough keeping food on the table, and I hear about this cheese give-away.

Me:  I think every state could have up to 30 million pounds.

Uncle Eddy:  Yeh.  But imagine this, Charlie – your kids is hungry and you stand in line for cheese, maybe your wife, too, and at the end of the line you get a 5 pound block of cheese.   Charlie, I ain’t a high-class guy, but I got some pride and it don’t do much for a man’s self-respect to stand in line for a brick of cheese.  But kids got to eat, so pride-schmide.  So we stood there and got our share.

Me:  Sorry you had to do that, Ed.  And I didn’t know.

Uncle Eddy:  Well I know you seen your own hard times, but this was the hardest.   We ate so damn much macaroni and cheese I didn’t take a dump until the mills re-opened in the spring.  And kept standing in line until then.

Me: But that’s in the past, Uncle Ed.

Uncle Eddy:  Maybe. I found out the government’s still buys milk from farmers and stores it up, and got millions of pounds again.  And them Congress guys don’t like welfare, cause they ain’t never been hungry. So I figure it’s cheaper for them to give us more cheese.  So the Prez will give it out.  Wait and see.