Old Lady - Television Interview
There's a story told about an elderly lady in Arkansas. The state voted to
increase welfare payments to indigents. Hoping for a tear-jerker story, a
television interviewer went into the back hills where many welfare
recipients lived.
The old woman he chose to interview lived in a one-room shack: draughty in
winter; stifling in summer. Her bed was a few rough planks nailed together,
with a pine-needle mattress. A couple thin blankets, and a fireplace, did
little to protect her from the cold.
Her furniture, a table and two chairs, were fashioned from the same rough
wood as her bed. Some shelves held a few cans of food from the general
store, a three mile walk down the road. Several jars of preserves and a few
squash completed her larder.
She had no fridge or freezer. The fireplace provided heat for cooking. With
no phone or television her only connection with the outside world was an old
radio that pulled in two or three local stations on a good day.
The old woman had one convenience, running water. A crystal clear stream
gurgled a short distance behind her home.
A small garden near her back door provided fresh vegetables during the
summer, and some squash and turnips for the winter. A tidy flower garden
brightened the front of her house.
The television crew arrived and set up their big expensive cameras. Their
mobile station broadcast pictures of the woman and the place she called
home.
Eventually the interviewer asked the old woman, "If the government gave you
$200 more each month, what would you do with it?"
Without hesitation the woman replied, "I'd give it to the poor."
[ Peggie C. Bohanon -- source: 'fun-n-faith' (Author Unknown) -- {used with permission} ]
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