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January 18, 2002

"Not blackeyed peas and cornbread AGAIN!" I moaned, when for the third night running, Mel was dishing up leftovers from New Year's Day.

"You orta be grateful. Thur's li'l kids in Africa who'd be glad to have 'em," Mel chided. "I thought you liked peas, an' I did git a purdy good scald on these if I say so myself."

"I do like peas, and these are good enough, it's just that I'm getting blackeyed pea burnout. I warned you we'd be eating on them from now on when you filled up that two-quart crock pot."

"Well, the way thangs is shapin' up for 2002, I don't thank I cooked enough of 'em. Looks like we're gonna need all the hep we can git if we're gonna have any prosperity a'tall," he said.

"People keep saying the recession is going to be over this spring. Even the Federal Reserve..."

"They don't know squat," Mel replied. "If they did, they'da seen this'n comin'. You got failed dot.coms an' airlines, you got a war wagin', you got big layoffs, the travel industry's on the ropes, retailers slashin' prices an' still cain't move thur stuff...yougot Enron an' Argentina goin' bankrupt, you got commodity prices in the tank, an' whut you AIN'T got is a farm bill! Who they tryin' to fool? Their remedy is jist fer people to shop thur way outta this recession, but most folks has done got thur credit cards maxed out an' has took out second mortgages already."

Mel paused for a mouthful of peas an' continued, "Right now, thur don't seem to be no demand for nuttin'. People here in the U.S. has got two of ever'thang an' folks in the rest of the world cain't eben afford to buy one, 'less we loan 'em the money. 'Less they start thankin' dif'fernt in Warsh-ington D.C., I don't see thangs improvin' fer any length o' time."

"You sound awfully pessimistic, Mel. That's not like you."

"What's aggurvatin' is durin' the good times, some of the boats didn't rise to the top...farmers', fer instance. When they wuz flyin' high on Wall Street, crop prices for the guys on the farm-to-market roads wuz still down in the range o' what they wuz gittin' thirty years ago. Now that the bubble's busted up thur, you can jist imagine how thangs are gonna shake out fer agriculture, if they don't git on the ball an' git this farm bill nailed down. Nobody seems to have noticed that rural America has been in a recession for a mighty long time."

I agreed that the financial outlook, in many ways, seems bleak and that a lot of things are relative when it comes to assessing the state of the economy.

"Brings to mind the old joke, the one that asks, `What's the difference between a depression and a recession?' And the answer is, `A recession's when your friend loses his job. A depression's when you lose yours.'"

"Yep," Mel agreed. "Better eat up. An' when we finish off this batch o' peas, I may jist cook up another un."

"Surely you don't believe eating blackeyed peas is going to make us any more prosperous than we'd be otherwise."

"Maybe not," Mel said," but at least it may do the poor ol' boy growin' 'em some good!"