Hard Times

Hard times is real. There's work if you'll have it but there's no profit in it. Still we worked all we could, like working more would make the hard times end. Hard times is like a drought. There's nothing to be done to end it. The dust blows and the crops die and the young people leave the small towns for the bigger towns where there is more opportunity. Really no more opportunity, just more loose money. The young people don't make a profit in the city but they make enough money to buy food and shelter. Here in the small town we have food and shelter but no money. That's hard times when you have no money. So the young people think times are easier in the city because they have a little money, enough to buy shelter and food, but they could have that here.

They drink because times are hard. Since they drink they have just enough money for food and a one room apartment in the half basement of an old building. I went there once. You feel the brokeness of it. It ain't like hard times in our small town, it's worse much worse.

On some holidays they drink a lot. They drink a lot on St. Patrick's Day though no one is Irish. They drink a lot on Independence Day, to celebrate their independence I guess. They drink a lot on Halloween for fear of gouls. And they drink a lot at Christmas. I never understood the reason for that. They drink when things are good like on payday which is really just like any other day except they have a little money for a while. They drink when bad things happen like someone loses a job. When you add it all up drinking is their main activity if you don't count work. I'm not sayin' it's wrong, I drank a lot too when I was younger, but now I can't and times is hard.

I was something of a rounder then, sometimes drinking, sometimes brawling, sometimes both but not so much. When you're drinking your brawling suffers. My drinking went on years after my brawling ended. I'd like to have those years back. None of the people I thought friends then are around any more, at least I never see them. Even the folks I thought then were real close are gone. I hear about them some. They're still drinking. I guess times are hard for them too.