Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I saw a bumper sticker in town yesterday in the parking lot of the last Gibson’s store in existence. 20 year old beat-to-hell pickup with the sticker, “I make money the old fashioned way – I work for it“.
Judging by the truck, I’m guessing he’s probably telling the truth.
Inside the store when I went to pay for my purchase the cashier held the bill up to the light, then used a black felt tip pen on it and squinted at it again. When she decided it was okay I asked whether they get any phonies.
“Lots of them.” She shrugged and counted out my change, which I didn’t examine closely. That’s trust.
The fact is there are lots of old fashioned ways to make money. Working has always been the least efficient method, but it’s widely praised by people who have a lot of it by inheritance, politics, graft, bailouts, handouts, subsidies, and prostitution. Someone has to do the grunt work or the whole system of economics falls apart.
Fact is, someone has to ring the cash registers, clean out the sewer lines, change the oil on cars, sit behind desks doing meaningless, boring, dead-end chores all day or it would become downright inconvenient for people who made their money the various other old fashioned ways.
And those hamburger flippers and sewer plant operaters need to be able to find something about it they can construe as a virtue, rather than just being fools and useful zombies drawing lousy pay for essential work to keep things running.
So Far From Heaven 
I hope you will be ecstatic to learn there is also still a Gibson’s in Weatherford, Texas. I thought that was the last one on earth. At least it was there last I checked. And I just wrote a post called “Hard Working Myths” (on another blog) about this: “Somewhere in my past, someone instilled in me that hard work pays off. This week, after feeling despair that maybe my prospective entrance into job captivity won’t be temporary as my husband can’t seem to make any more dollars ooze out of his own physical exhaustion, I’m thinking I was lied to – or at the least, I misunderstood. Yes, it probably does pay off. I just thought they meant it pays me. I believed there was some big chocolate bunny at the end of this candy land rainbow I’ve been chasing all these years, but I’m getting suspicious that someone already ate it. We have always worked, very hard. And I am very grateful for every blessing and provision in our lives. We are truly blessed in numerous ways I can’t even count. But when it comes to making ends meet, they never quite do.”
I’m really glad I’ve learned money isn’t real or I’d be pretty depressed. Too bad the cashiers still think some of it is.
8thDay4Life: I’m shocked. Around here everyone thinks this one’s the only one left.
We spent our lives working and made a virtue of it. I’ve wondered about that a lot lately.
Gracias, J
🙂
I`ve made money the old fashioned way and pinched and pinched. What gets me is the younger generation feels entitled to what their parents broke their backs for. Bah.
Hi Tess: It’s a new world out there. There’s more in heaven and earth than is something-or-othered in our philosophies, Old Sol says. Gracias, J
I didn’t realize there were Gibson’s stores outside of Nebraska and Iowa. I used to find all kinds of bargains at the one here in Norfolk, NE.