By Jerry Barksdale
When I was kid we lived in a tenant house with no indoor plumbing, owned no car and made a half-bale of cotton per acre.
“Young’n, this gravy train we’re rid’n won’t last forever,” Daddy often said.
I assumed that we were rich. Daddy invested heavily in dogs and shotgun shells. We owned 17 fox hounds, two bird dogs and a yard dog. Even Rockefeller didn’t have that many mutts. We also had a radio and listened to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night.
I received a new pair of jeans and shoes each fall and got to attend the Limestone County Fair where I rode the merry-go-round and saw the tattooed fat lady. Daddy was right. We were on a gravy train.
He was always preparing me psychologically for the next Depression, which according to him was coming.
“You’ll be eat’n rabbits and squirrel and be glad to have it,” he said.
He enjoyed telling about one Depression family living in the community that barked like hounds while chasing a rabbit into a hollow log and then twisting it out with a bamboo briar.
After hearing gloom and doom I didn’t dare ask for a quarter.
Although Daddy’s expertise was cotton farming, fox hunting, and quail hunting, he may have been a financial seer.
The gravy train has slowed down.
Today, financial experts tell us not to panic. It’s a time to buy, they say, while at the same time they are panicking and baling out of the market. They need fools like you and me to buy what they sell. I don’t trust anyone with a $200 haircut who wears wide gray pinstripe suits and yellow silk neckties.
In these times of economic crisis, I recommend Poor Richard’s Almanac, written by Benjamin Franklin in 1732. Any fat, ugly 70-year-old man who went to Paris as ambassador of the Continental Congress and swung with young French women in King Louis XVI’s court, is worthy of our attention.
While visiting Philadelphia on July 4, 2006, I purchased a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac for $2. I’ll share some of his financial gems of wisdom, discussed and interpreted by Alvin and Thelma of Rt. 4:
• “The second vice is lying; the first is running in debt.” (Dadgumit, Thelma! That means you maxed out the Visa again and lied about it.)
• “Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee.” (Alvin, that means you gotta get your sorry carcass outta bed, sober up and go to work. We’re about out of cigarettes and beer.)
• “If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.” (Thelma, that means we’re spending more money than we earn. What else is new, dummy?)
• “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” (Thelma, that means you’ve gotta stop hav’n yer nails done every week. Stuff it, Alvin?)
• “Spare and have is better than to spend and crave.” (Thelma, you keep harping about sav’n money, but just let me get a new tree stand, we’ll start sav’n next year.)
• “A penny saved is a penny earned.” (Heck Thelma, why save a penny? It won’t buy anything?)
• “For age and want save while you may; no morning sun lasts all day.” (Thelma, that don’t’ mean Jack anymore. The guv’met’ll take care of us if we need help. Are you goin’ to Tunica or not?)
There is another saying that still rings true today: “Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other.”
