It beats working......I guess

Yesterday I drove all over creation (okay, this corner of Illinois) looking for something that could have been gotten at Walmart, Home Depot, and of course, Menards (Menards has everything AND the people to help you).  I drove south and started my way north back towards Collinsville, and was pulling through the Home Depot parking lot.

AND I WAS ASSAILED BY A PANHANDLER!!!

And this guy was GOOD. He had tale of woe that SHOULD have worn him an award.  It went like this.

INTRODUCTION: (I suppose a name makes it personal).

STORY LINE:  He and his wife were visiting their daughter, a sophomore at Southern Illinois University; Edwardsville (SIUE), and their cars, BOTH of their cars, ran out of gas right there in the HD parking lot (IN PARKING SPACES NO LESS).  He claimed that neither of his debit cards worked (which I understand CAN happen if you have no frigging money), and all he needed was enough gas to make it home (which is about 30 miles outside of Columbia, MO…which is pretty much in the center of Missouri). 

ME:  “Ummmmm………..no”.

What an IDIOT….and I am sure an idiot that encounters more than a few bigger idiots….and me, being a normal thinker, thought this:  What sort of odd ball child leaves the center of Missouri, home of the University of Missouri, and Columbia College, and fights their way through about a dozen reputable schools to go to ILLINOIS and Southern Illinois University.  And what adult brings two cars across the state, and then runs out of gas and has the misfortune to not have his/her debit card not work?

But, that was more deliberation than was needed for a “no”.

Fifteen minutes from here is a steel plant, closed during the Obama years.  The plant (I think it is a US Steel plant) kept a crew there to keep the lights on, and this past year it opened up and went from about 25 people back to about a thousand is still re-bounding.  This week there were ads in the paper for jobs at that plant….not boilermakers, not engineers, not technicians, just people……for $21 an hour.  Walk in, pass a drug test (increasingly more difficult these days; I get that), and start at $21.  I have every idea that it is back breaking work….I mean, IT IS A STEEL plant, but you don’t have to know crap…..just come to work….that’s it.

And it SURE as hell has to beat panhandling in shin deep snow in 28 degrees in the Home Depot parking lot.

Some people…..but the good news is that the House of Representatives, and before next week is out, probably the Senate, are these kinds of peoples people…..that plant may close and pan handling will be an honorable profession.  In this state it will be unionized and a new protected class established.

Maybe the panhandler is on the cutting edge of something.