OUT OF WORK

The year 2001 was a pretty devastating year for me and my family, I
was given notice that I would be laid off work after 18 years as a
maintenance mechanic for a large aircraft company. From that point on
it seems my whole life fell apart. We lived in Florida, and it seemed
like it was going to be a very long summer for us. It had been seven
long months since I'd worked; it was looking pretty bad. My wife got a
job working part time for a fast-food restaurant and we had two kids
seven and nine. We both were desperately trying to keep ourselves
together with what little money
we had saved over the past years and it was nearly gone. We had less
than $200 in our savings left.
We canceled our insurance on our Chevy van and cut back where we could
but it seemed like it was not enough. We had rent, food and a few bills
that were way over do. We were trying to figure out how we were going
to pay them on what we had.
We were starting to argue quite often in the last few months over
practically everything, mostly not knowing what we were going to do
next.
I had looked and looked all over the county and
could not find any work in the aircraft business.
I resorted to taking a few jobs working in people's
yards cleaning up and trimming trees, even that
was not enough.
I finally got a part-time job working at Wendy's hamburgers, it was
only four hours a night and
only 3 days a week, it wasn't much but felt good to be working a again.
Then it finally happened, we were getting evicted and had three weeks
to move out of our home. My wife was so stressed out that she
broke-down crying and grabbed our kids hugging them close and screamed
out at the top of her voice "why is this happening to us? Three weeks
later we were out on the street living out of our Van.
I would look at my wife's face and see her eyes swollen and red from
crying all the time. I grabbed her and kissed her two or three times
and said, "I don't want to lose you, but it's best for you to go with
the kids and live with your parents.
I told her I would stay with the van and keep trying
to find more work. She refused to go but I told her
she had to think of the kids. It hurt me but I forced
her to go to her parents. They lived 500 mi. from where we were, her
parents sent tickets for them
to fly back. I couldn't take it, I broke down crying
as I seen them get on the plane and leave but I
knew I had to get myself together and keep looking
for work. A few days later I was at the unemployment office when I met
this guy named Danny standing in line next to me; he started a
conversation with me.
We hit it off real good from the beginning.
He looked pretty grubby like a street person but for some reason I
liked him. After a few days going
back-and-forth to the employment office, I got to
know Danny pretty well, I would run into him every
day at the employment office, we became good buddies and each time we
would see each other,
we would talk about how hungry we were.
As we were standing in line there was a guy eating
an apple, he took one bite out of it then tossed in the trash. I looked
back toward Danny standing behind me in line and whispered, "Danny; did
you see that guy with the apple? Yes I did, he tossed it in the trash
and you know at this point I feel like jumping in there and getting it
out of the trash. I'm so hungry Danny,
he looked at me and said I'll get us something to eat. I'll be back in
a minute, four or five minutes later,
I seen him waving his hands outside the window to me to come outside,
so I left the line and went outside to see what he wanted and as I got
out there, he had a small table with two chairs a tablecloth, salt
shaker and pepper and two large dinners with a quart of milk and
biscuits. Also a little container of gravy and a tossed salad in the
center of the table.
I stood there flabbergasted at what I was seeing,
I couldn't believe what I was looking at.
Danny, where in hell did you get all this food? I just leaned against
the wall out here and closed my eyes and when I opened them it was all
in front of me. "what" I can't believe it, looks great, it was just
here in front of me.

The hell with how it looks, let's sit down and eat.
Danny this is great I can't believe it, it's like a
Lost Vegas buffet.
"Honey it is 6:30" wake up" you are going
to be late for work. "My God, it was a dream"

A short story by Norman Clifford
12-2-2002