In
response to accusations made in dear-editor letters
during my first term in office, I now openly admit I
was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Although
Robin Leach never got around to filming the Double
Rafter Ranch on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”,
my adolescence was one of privilege—but for atypical
reasons. Here was a normal winter school day when I
was a kid.
After breakfast and brushing our teeth, my two
brothers and I grabbed our lunch boxes and hustled
to Slack School. It was a half-mile trek up the
county road and unlike the stories of my ancestors;
it was actually only uphill one way. During the
winter time the gravel road was solid ice, so using
our black, metal, lunch boxes like a puck, we played
a game which was a blend of bowling and curling.
With a smooth launch, it was possible to skid your
lunch box 150 feet along the road before it slid off
into the borrow pit. Before we knew it, we were at
school where we placed our lunch boxes on the shelf,
hung our coats on the peg and took our seats in the
one-room country school.
In 1965, I was the third grade at Slack School. (No,
I did not forget a word in that sentence. Depending
on which direction you measured, I was the top or
bottom student in my class for three years.) Sharing
the room with me were first, second and sixth
graders, while the fourth graders held class in the
trailer house out back. At lunch time, which felt
like eons since breakfast, we snagged our lunch
boxes and scurried back to our desks. Unsnapping the
two silver latches, opening the lunch box and
inhaling the glorious aroma of sandwiches, cheese,
chicken, apples, carrots, milk or a candy bar, made
lunch time the highlight of my day. It was like
Christmas morning, digging through all the goodies
Mom placed in my lunch box and to this
eight-year-old it felt as if Mom was sitting right
there eating with me. My life was privileged because
I grew up a country kid whose mom packed his lunch.
Today, 47 years later, the importance of my grade
school lunchbox has come back into focus.
A few weeks ago in North Carolina, an agent from the
Division of Child Development and Early Education
rejected the lunch of a four-year-old preschooler
because it was nutritionally deemed outside
government standards. The Food Police brought the
lunch into compliance by adding three chicken
nuggets and billing the irresponsible parent $1.25.
Let me repeat this: This little girl was four years
old.
Operating under the Department of Health and Human
Services, this agent is probably one of the
one-million jobs created or saved by President
Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This
means there could be 999,999 others of a similar
mindset lurking in lunch rooms across America. What
has happened to my country? If there had been Food
Police at Slack School in 1965 who deemed some
aspect of my lunch as below government standards
thereby reprimanding my mother—lookout. Mom, who
carried the secrete nickname “Fang”, would have
exploded in a manner glorified in country / western
songs like Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and
Shove It”. Do not misinterpret my mother’s reaction;
she definitely was not the mother-hen type who
hovered around school protecting her little ones,
but she was fearless in labeling wrong as wrong.
Back then, parents demanded the freedom to raise
their children as they saw fit, but the ‘60s began
the conditioning of parents to be meek and yield to
the whims of an all-knowing big government.
Marxist philosophy did not break the American family
overnight; it took decades to systematically
disassemble the backbone of our great republic.
First, fathers were removed from the family equation
through aid programs rewarding illegitimacy. Next,
government replaced God as our controlling moral
authority and the little people were trained there
is a government solution to every problem. If you
need healthcare, turn to government. If you need
help with your green energy bill, turn to
government. If you want a house, but can’t afford a
mortgage, turn to government. If you want a free
college education, turn to government. If the earth
feels too warm, too cold, too wet, too dry, too
windy, too dark, too light…you get the picture.
Americans have become too timid to make even the
simplest decisions in life, such as preparing lunch
for our children. Enslavement to big government will
continue until the majority of us stand and scream,
“Leave me alone. Leave my children alone. Leave my
property alone. I just want to be free!” What say
you?
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