At Times I Wonder...

Growing up in the thirties, my family lived in an apartment building in the Kingsbridge Road section of the Bronx.

Playing baseball in the streets was not possible for a variety of reasons, so we played a street game that I loved: “stickball.” There were a variety of forms to the game, but you always needed a ball, (a Spaldeeeene), and a stick, usually borrowed from my mother's carpet sweeper. These all worked out well, EXCEPT that the police would sneak up on our game and confiscate our sticks. We would post lookouts to guard against police intervention, and when a cop was spotted, the warning cry was, “Chickey, the cops.”

I always wondered about this, and still think about it today: Why did the cops do this? Any answers that anyone has would be appreciated.

In the intervening 60 or so years I have wondered about so many things, and here is another one: I have watched our President promise to re-build New Orleans, along with the other areas devastated by two hurricanes. This is certainly a “noble cause,” but it will cost our country hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t happen to have.

When Tom DeLay resigned from his position yesterday, he said, among other things: (emphasis added)

“Here in Washington, there's work, very hard work ahead of our conference. We have a war to win, a region to rebuild, a budget to balance, taxes to cut, a government to reform and a nation to lead.

"In the coming weeks, the House is committed to major legislation reforming our border security and immigration laws, alleviating the rising costs of gasoline and heating fuel before the winter, and saving tens of billions of dollars through reforming federal entitlement programs."

At the same time, DeLay is still talking about further tax cuts, (a bad idea), and cutting “tens of billions of dollars through reforming Federal Entitlement programs.”

I expect that it is ok to spend hundreds of billions in a well-publicized plan to assist hundreds of thousands, or millions, but we need not worry about helpless people, one at a time, who will have their “entitlement” programs reduced or eliminated. If you are one of the mothers from the disaster area you will be helped, but if you're a mother in Chicago for example, you will be disadvantaged. Did DeLay ever sign on as a “compassionate conservative?” What ever became of compassion, one person at a time?

This is slightly more important then the cops taking our bats when we played stickball, yet it makes even less sense.

And while I am on the subject, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my mother for taking away so many carpet sweeper handles, among countless other things that I did that I shouldn’t have done.