The times, they ain't all that bad

By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
Aug. 23, 2002
Yes, the stock market has stumbled significantly of late and we have serious threats to our country that didn't exist just a few years ago. And there are still a relatively small number of our fellow citizens who are struggling to survive with minimal housing, income, medical care etc. And even one person in that category is too many. But those of us who make up the majority that we call "average Americans" are faring pretty well.
This may be dubious news to those born since the Korean War and who didn't know television was once available only in black and white and who think automatic transmissions were always an option on Chevys. But most of the rest of us remember harder times, and our parents grew up in families with so little money that they found a lot of things to do that didn't involve spending it.
Being what I loosely, but very proudly, consider to be an "average American," I feel justified in taking a look now and then at the stuff we have that money can buy which is legion and reflecting on just how good we have it. I have my ways of taking the country's economic pulse that I am certain are not taught at Yale and to my knowledge are not used by Mr. Greenspan's staff.
Impromptu analyses
Sometimes these measures of prosperity come unexpectedly. Like the other day when I caught a possum in my trap that was set in the garden in order to capture and admonish whatever was getting past my electric fence and eating my tomatoes.
After giving the possum a good talking to, I notified him/her that I was about to change its address to an environment it would likely enjoy along the banks of Okatibbee Creek. I didn't inform the possum at the time that such move was actually Plan B, and that Plan A, that is always an option with a captive possum, was one that if initiated would not be beneficial to him/her.
All pre-color TV citizens know what Plan A is, and that it involves a ring of baked and candied sweet potatoes on a large platter that graces the Sunday dinner table.
I had chosen as the beneficiary of Plan A my good friend Bobby Sims , the retired County Agricultural Extension Agent for Lauderdale County. It was an easy choice because the Sims' home was on the way to Okatibbee Swamp.
Bobby was in the yard carrying out orders from Miss Ouida when I arrived with the possum still housed in my Havahart trap. I called Bobby over to my pickup and offered him the possum. The possum looked at Bobby with that blank, innocent, expectant gaze that possums have and Bobby looked at the possum with, I assume, mental comparisons of the benefits and liabilities of owning a possum at this point in life long enough to fatten him for the dinner table.
Shortly (the brevity of his decision-making being an important measure of economic well being) Bobby declined my offer to give him the possum.
Hurt feelings
Of course this hurt my feelings a little, because no one wants to offer a friend a gift and have it rejected. And I knew that if Miss Ouida , a world class cook, learned of this squandered opportunity that she might be disappointed. But I won't tell her and I am confident the subject won't be raised by Bobby.
But my hurt feelings were quickly offset by the realization that the Sims really didn't need to fatten and cook a possum. As I once overheard an old timer sitting on a stack of wooden Coke boxes say to his tobacco chewing friend in a cane bottom chair, "Times, they is pretty good, ain't they?"
Times is good when the Barhams can afford to give away a perfectly good possum and the Sims of the world can afford to have someone else fatten and cook their Sunday dinner possums for them. Yes, times, they is good.
(I must report that the possum, though temporarily disoriented, is enjoying new experiences in a secure environment along Okatibbee Creek. He/she should live a safe and happy life there, unless of course times get hard.)