THINGS I AM SICK AND TIRED OF

There are a lot of things going on these days that I just simply am  sick and tired of.  I noticed that we now have a shortage or an upcoming or at least they think we will have a shortage of bacon.  Well, so what!  We can live without bacon if we have to, you know.

In 1957, there was a shortage of a lot of things.  I know because I had just had a new baby and could not buy some of the groceries I really needed and had to drive all over the place to find them.   First, we had a shortage of coffee.  Oh my!  The world just about flipped over that one.  We all heard about how in Columbia, there was a shortage of something and this made us all have a shortage of coffee.  Well, people were hanging onto their coffee cups and whining a lot over that one.

Next, we had a shortage of sugar.  Of course this made the price go sky high.   And did I mention that by now, coffee was about tripled in price?  Well, sugar soon was, too.  No one could run their household in those years without that five pound bag of sugar.  Had to have that just to get up in the morning.  There were no sugar substitutes to lean on and no one ever considered just doing without it.  Absolutely no way we could exist without sugar.

There were a lot more shortages, in fact about 5 or 6  really standard items that we all depended on and that suddenly went short.  Meat was another one, if I remember correctly.  But I really don’t remember all the rest of them.  The result was that prices went up.  Isn’t that the intended result anyway?  Higher grocery prices and then everyone can explain why. Suddenly coffee went up and then sugar and then the meat.  Well, we all just had to adjust and lower our standard of living in order to buy groceries.  That was the intended plan all along anyway.

Now we have a shortage of gasoline for our cars.  Shame on us for having a car anyway.   We should all be out hoofing it everywhere and riding that bus that is never on time or the subway or the streetcar or thumbing a ride to WalMart.  Of course the prices on gasoline have been going up quite a lot.  But no one really explains why we have a shortage in the first place.  Could it just happen to be so that they – whoever they are – can raise the prices?  And then when the election gets closer, the prices begin to come down so that those in charge, whoever they are, can now say – Oh Lookie, the price of gasoline has gone down.  And those in charge take full credit.  How convenient.

Maybe if we could just drill for our own oil and provide for our own gasoline, maybe we could have a decent price on our gas.  But then, those in charge could not take credit for that one.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I am with Robin Williams who recently said we should offer all those oil producing nations $10 a barrel for oil and then they can like it or lump it.  If they decide to lump it, they can sell their oil to someone else in the world.  Meanwhile, we’ll just produce all our own products.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  Wouldn’t that be normal once again?  Maybe, just maybe if we vote for the right people this time around, we can see our country begin to progress once again.   Maybe we can drill for our own oil and run our own pipe lines and quit protecting those overpopulated bears and wolves and spiders and whatever else those environmentalists can come up with.  Wouldn’t that be nice, though.

I remember a normal time with no one trying to run everything their way.  I do remember that. Maybe we can have it again.  Sure hope so.