Stephen Yeargin

My regular routine in the morning, if I have not had breakfast or stockpiled some kind of snack and Cokes at work, is to stop at one of three convenience stores along the way. Today I picked up my usual, signed the debit card receipt and walked out the door into the parking lot. A woman approached me.

Woman: Sir, can I talk to you for a moment
Pause, making sure to keep at least a good arms length distance
Me: Yes ma’m?
Woman: My husband and I are coming back from seeing our granddaughter in the hospital …
Gestures to a truck mostly held together by duct tape
Woman: … and we are trying to get home and don’t have any money. Can you help us keep from starving?
Me: Well, I have some chicken strips here, let’s see …
Woman: I don’t want to take your food
Me: Uh. I’m sorry, but I don’t carry cash
Woman (eyes trailing off): That’s okay.

I am fairly sure it was a scam, or they really did need money for gas and their requests for that were mostly rebuffed. The granddaughter in the hospital at least sounded plausible. I walked over to my van, checking over my shoulder to see where she headed. I remembered how I had noticed her walking franticly around the parking lot when I pulled up, so the morning was not going well for her.

I am a nice guy, and apparently that fact somehow broadcasts itself outward. I once gave $20 to a carload of people that pulled into a church parking lot (I had pulled over to kill some time) because one of them got out of the car and came over to mine and asked if I knew the pastor and simply said they were in need of help. I believe charity is a value far too often overlooked in society.

Around lunch, while I was waiting on Samantha to meet me at a Subway, I saw an elderly woman chasing her small dog around in the pouring rain. She had to be at least 70 years old. After finally wrangling in the mutt and putting it back into the car, she walked into the check advance office. My soul felt a bit crushed, because one or both of these possibilities were true: she lived on a fixed income (social security, Medicare) or held some sort of menial job typically reserved for a teenager. Either way, ends were not being met, and she had no choice but to pack up her dog and head over to a check advance office for a high-interest loan.

With high foreclosure rates, higher unemployment and a slowing economy, I can be certain that scenes like these will play out more and more often. Yesterday’s middle class is becoming today’s woman begging for money in the gas station parking lot. The Greatest Generation now works as greeters for Wal-Mart and fry cooks for McDonald’s, not because they want to but because it is the only way they can afford prescription medications. And even when it looks like hard work and perseverance can pull through, there is a payday loan office right around the corner.

Something is wrong in America.