Happy Day

The Sowers (1934), Thomas Hart Benton

Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven
--Pennies from Heaven, Johnston/Burke

Isn't this a lovely day
To be caught in the rain?
--Isn't this a Lovely Day?, Irving Berlin

Gone like a Nixon file gone gone away
Gone like my landlord smile gone gone away
--Gone, John Hiatt
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(written at a truck stop)-- It is what passes for a happy day in America when you can fill up your gas tank and the price of petrol hasn't risen 5¢ per gallon since your last fill up. Ranger remembers when gas prices remained stable for years on end.

Ranger also marvels on a simple drive of 20 miles at the number of newly-closed businesses sporting For Sale signs. Also, the number of homes for sale, most with Reduced Price signs. Perhaps the most telling is the reduced number of 18-wheelers at the interstate truck stops.

In a discussion at the truck stop one of the long-haul truck drivers shared that he lost money on a recently signed contract before he even hauled the first load because of rising fuel costs. "You can't sign it (a contract) two weeks out now." He said he has five trucks and they are not on the road because they can't negotiate long-term contracts due to unstable fuel costs.

Another sign of the times can be had at your local pawn shop. Go in on a Friday night sometime and just feel. Yes, feel. And listen. The desperation is palpable. This is the New America. Overspent, overdrawn, underpaid and underemployed.

Talk to anybody who's not reading the Robb Report and is working for a living, and ask them their beliefs on where their life is heading; it is not optimistic.

Funny how the reports of Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page and the people can be so far apart.