Tips for the New Recession

I'm told the United States stock market has hit the skids and we're facing a recession as bad or worse than that of 2008, an ugly one around here, with shuttered businesses and gasoline at over $4 a gallon and city people dumping their pets here and country people poaching deer and echinacea roots, and meth labs in the woods.

Times were lean but I made it through. Just today I began listing what I'd do to survive this next one:

1. Purchases of any type are limited to one day per week: Sunday.
2. Avoid strip-mall businesses.
3. Prioritize health and friends. Travel, decor and trinkets when times improve.
4. Don't date people or acquire a pet.
5. Increase intake of beans and potatoes (which I like), but eat 3 meals daily with at least 3 ounces of protein at each.
6. Goodwill if needing something. Discount and ethnic grocery stores only.
7. Gorilla Glue, y'all.
8. Handkerchiefs and the rag bag.
9. Exercise, but not hard or long. Hard exercise increases the appetite -- savagely.
10. Use what you've got, like that passel of pink and orange lipsticks.
11. Library.
12. Work harder? No. Use leverage ( = making use of what you already have to move forward). 
13. Uber Driver if it comes to that; already called to adjust car insurance for that.

Boonville, MO

On a bus trip from Kansas City to St. Louis we (44 ladies, laughing art lovers who'd been touring museums in KC) stopped at the Love's gas station and quickshop in Boonville, where I'd never stopped before, about halfway across the state. I understand there was a Civil War battle in Boonville, and the Budweiser Clydesdales are stabled there, and there is a historic walking tour of Boonville's many attractions, but this, across the road from the Love's, is what caught my eye. The Love's was doing great business selling Wendy's burgers, Starbucks espresso in cans, and showers to those passing through, but across the road there are no more weekly specials for residents, whatever they might have bought here.

Meet Farmer Bob

He'd just got there and parked, because his truck bed was full of dozens of eggs, in miscellaneous cartons. (Who decided eggs should be sold by the dozen? It's the perfect number: a brilliant, immortal idea.)
I screeched the car to a halt. The brown-egg man on the side of the highway again!

This time approaching him I did better. He said, "Hello, young lady." (Always the salesman.) I smiled and said hello, and we exchanged how'er you, good morning, i'n'it a pretty spring day, and shook hands. He held my hand in his own cold hard hand and looked me square in the face. He said, "I've seen you before." I said yes. (My rare and elegant Turkish nose is unforgettable.) He got around to asking me how many dozen eggs I wanted.

"Just one," I said.
"Just one?" (Always the salesman. He isn't standing on the road shoulder for his health.)
"I only need one. There's only me," I said.
"Only you? You mean a lovely young lady like yourself i'nt married?" (Always the salesman.) "Why is that?"
Keeping things simple, I said, "He died."
"Sorry to hear that. There's only one place to take those kind of troubles," he said, "and that's to the Lord." He said more and I just said, "You gotta have faith." It's a sentiment that nobody in Missouri objects to. (I've discovered only one other such statement: "Freedom isn't free." When I wear my "Freedom Isn't Free" t-shirt, people from all walks of life, in the bank, the drugstore, the street, read it and say, "Damn right," or "That's a fact.")

I thought about the friend I was on my way to visit and said, "Better make it two dozen; I know someone who'd like some fresh brown eggs."

He said they'd been laid just yesterday and crowed, "Any fresher and you'd have to be standing in the henhouse."

It took a long time for him to count out change in dollars and fives worn thin as toilet paper. "Can't see without my glasses," he explained. I asked his name. It's Bob something (a truck was roaring by and I couldn't hear the last name.) I asked if I could take his picture because I knew you'd like to see it. He's holding a carton of eggs he's bagged for me. He promised in the summer he'd bring his truck back full of homegrown tomatoes, pickles and more eggs.

Bars, Fried Pies, and Stuff

New businesses are sprouting in the area. Good to see there's still small-town business and the owners think there's consumer demand and are giving the people what they want. I'm a mite concerned as to what we seem to want. New businesses:

• Bar
  
• Motorcycle shop (the town's third)
• Fried pies
• Gun shop
• Dialysis parlor
• Car-window-tinting service
• Calorie Comfort ("indulge and beat the bulge")
• 2 "urgent care" walk-in facilities

Says something about the way we live now...

Recession Chic

Sunday, Hawkeye invited about 20 womenfolk to her house telling them to bring all the clothes and accessories they don't wear. We put the resulting tons of clothes on racks and tables in all five of her upstairs rooms and everyone picked out and tried on what they wanted and took home what they liked; the remainder to charity. We all got new things and no one spent a cent. Try this with your friends. The more women, the more sizes there will be to choose from, so encourage all your Lillian Russells along with your Skinny Minnies, and serve margaritas and Oreos and whoop up the hen party. As part of my haul, I got a pink T-shirt, brand-new, with hummingbirds on it. It doesn't get any better than that.