Right this very minute, I am poor as church mice. And I want to
speak about why I love the rich guy, and why I want the government to leave the
rich guy the hell alone.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life, had a lot of jobs and only
once did a poor man give me a job, and the check bounced. So I don’t work for
poor people any more.
I’ve worked for large companies with lots of benefits and I’ve
worked for the guy building a dream. I’ll take the guy building a dream
anytime.
I worked for this fellow once, over in Alabama Styx River
He went out and bought a tractor, a big bull-dozer and a little
bull-dozer, and track-hoe, an earth-mover (scraper), a grader, a roller, a
front end loader, a dump-truck and a fire-truck. He bought all this at an
auction, it was all used, and he got it cheap.
He hired a retired engineer, me and a mechanic. And starting from a
bench mark on the state bridge crossing the river, we worked our way onto the
property and eighteen months later we had cleared two-hundred acres of
overgrowth, built three dammed lakes and one dug (excavated) lake, laid, ditched and paved three miles of
road, including mining the road building dirt, and back-filling the pits. He
even grew his own hay, and you’d be amazed at how much hay a job like that
takes.
Three of us, and the boss. When the job was finished, I stood
amazed at what we had accomplished, how much earth had been moved as we shaped
the landscape into a neighborhood. Three of us and the boss.
Now I bet you think I’m talking about the boss being the rich man,
you’d be wrong. The rich man was the fellow who bought all of that equipment
new. Whatever it was he did with all that equipment, he was done with it now,
and it went up for sale at a price the fellow I was working for, the fellow
with a dream, could afford. Giving me a
job, and the privilege of being part of a dream.
The rich man is different today than in the time of King Herod.
Today in America
When the rich man is flush with money, he gets his car washed, he
get’s his grass mowed, his house painted. And he also has to have a new car, a
new TV, a new computer, new furniture, new stove, new ice-box and on and on.
Because he has to have the latest and greatest, he pays the very
high price placed on an item when it is new to the market, ie…the flat screen
TV. Thus supplying the money for research, development and production while
creating a market, his lust for what is new, makes what is new, possible.
If you shop smart, all the stuff displaced by what the rich has to
have, goes onto the market somewhere. Starting with the yard-sale,
flea-markets, antique markets, collectible shops, Paula’s Cheaper Choices… so
on and so forth…
I have driven nice cars my entire life, but never a new one, I let
the rich buy it, drive it, work the bugs out of it, then when he’s tired of it,
I buy it, and enjoy it the same as he.
In 1976 I bought a ten year old Lincoln Continental for
seven-hundred dollars. It was a Lincoln
Continental, it was a beautiful automobile; it rode like a cloud, quiet as
a mouse, fast as the wind. It was the fastest car I ever owned, I drove this
automobile for ten years; it was the change in the gasoline which brought an
end to it. A beautiful automobile, truly an Art Form, a master piece of
American engineering, and I paid seven-hundred
dollars for it because some rich guy had to have it, and paid the 8,000
dollar sticker price of 1966.
You want a good set of pots and pans, can’t afford them, go to the
flea-market, you’ll find them. Whatever you want, a rich guy just got a new
one, and what he no longer needs or wants goes into the market-place somewhere.
So not only does the rich man build dreams and create jobs, he
enjoys life; let us enjoy it right along with him. Serve him, and inherit his
spill-over.
This is part of what makes America
Let us leave
him to his work, and let us help him work. And tell the Government to butt the hell out. ©
George Henry Nichols
No comments:
Post a Comment