Writers' Voice Home Page---First-Person Home Page

   A lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon- try being a highway beautification volunteer, or in plain language, a garbage man.  The job is not complete unless you wear a special orange vest so drivers can pay homage to you for your humanitarian zeal for clean highways.  In our case, our vests gave one driver a good target to toss his entire case of empty Mountain Dew cans at us.
   This type of undertaking is not appropriate unless the weather cooperates.  People that make t-shirts come up with catchy phrases like, "I survived the hottest day of the millennium."  Or, a day that 30 years later people will talk about in awed, hushed tones.

   "Myrtle.  Today's hot but 'member back in '96 when the cat exploded.  Too damn hot that day."
   "Yep, Stan.  Ole Fred was only three feet from his water bucket when he just keeled over."
   "Dropped dead.  Deader than a doornail."

   As I trudged along a rural highway with other volunteers, many of whom were in their 50s and had no business walking four miles on any day let alone these brutal conditions, I picked up all kinds of history- scraps of paper, pieces of a blown tire, aluminum cans (enough to start my own recycling business), a virtual beer, and even a diaper (used of course).
   Only people in the Midwest can relate to the heat that was being generated on that day.  In fact, it has been mentioned that when plots on Mercury go on sale, the side facing the sun, the first people in line will be Hoosiers, Illini, Buckeyes, and Hawkeyes...places where the humidity levels outnumber the average citizen's I.Q.
   The prevailing logic being, "It might bet a tad toasty on Mercury, but the humidity won't be as bad."
   I could barely breathe and through eyes burning from sweat (not perspiration, no person that used the word perspiration would everfind themselves doing this as a volunteer), I could make out the four-mile marker that would end my misery.  Suddenly, like Paul in the New Testament, a transformation of intelligence came over me and it burned itself into my collective consciousness.
   If anyone was forced to do this job, welfare would not be necessary for ABA (Able-Bodied Americans).  TAKE NOTE- Only ABA's would be eligible for this plan.  I know of many people who get laid off and take their government check's waiting until the last day before making an attempt to get off the government's tit.  Why not?  Who wouldn't want to sit home and just let money roll in for doing absolutely nothing.
   As I finished my volunteeer project, I now know for a fact that no ABA on any government sponsored handout would do what I had just done.  In two months, the only people left on welfare would be those who are physically unable to work.
   How would this plan work?
   Simple.  Clean-up crews of ABA's who are getting a government check would be driven 10 miles out of town, given three trash bags, and then told to fill the three bags as they walked back to town.  Each day a different road could be chosen.  At the end of four days (W, Th, Fr., Sat.) of handing in three full trash bags- oh- only have two bags, walk around the local park., the ABA would get (have earned) his government check.  On Mondays and Tuesdays, these ABAs would have the days off to look for a job and/or try to find a doctor who would sign a paper saying they are unable to walk 10 miles a day.  (It goes without saying that some people will try to dodge the system.)
    In one year of this system, all ABAs will have found work.  Why?   No one would go through the clean-up torture for long until that minimum wage job flippin' burgers would look very attractive.  These people might decide a good idea would be to get more education, earn good grades (a trickle-down theory would take over all public schools), and learn a job skill so they could not only get a job but keep it-- being laid off and going back on the road collecting garbage would not be a good alternative).  In the end, people would be better workers with more incentive, and since employers like harder workers, they might just earn a wage increase now and then.
   For those of you who agree with this plan, don't think Utopia has suddenly shined its lights on the welfare crisis in America.  This plan will never fly in the land of the free (irresponsible) and home of the brave (gutless).  Some civil liberties organization would slap an injunction on this plan in seconds, a commission of bureaucrats will study the proposal for a decade, and the court system will award millions to those on welfare who while just thinking of this plan have had to suffer injurious mental anguish.