The Food Stamp Cookout Story

My dad and stepmom run a motel in upstate New York.

It is not for the upper crust. It is more for the pizza crust.

In the summer my dad would host a cookout and invite everyone.

One of the guys that Dad was friends with took me with him to the Price Chopper to get some stuff for the party.

He put a few huge steaks in the basket. I can’t recall what all else, but those few huge steaks with the bone still in.

While we were walking the aisles, he told me that he was “part Indian” and said he was a Powass Indian, as in po’ ass…as in…no money.

It would not likely have been a memorable enough joke were it not for the next scene, in the register lane.

The cashier and the person behind us showed us substantial disdain and disgust when the high cost of those steaks was paid with brightly colored food stamps.

He didn’t seem embarrassed, but I was. I knew how to “be poor” and not draw the ire of wealthier neighbors who all know that they are subsidizing our dinner.

As we were walking out, he says to me, “They see me buying fancy steaks with food stamps and they think, This is the problem with our country, free handouts to lazy bums, and they eat better than we do. But what they miss is that I’ve been eating plain noodles and canned beans for the past month so that I could buy these steaks to share at this party, where I know others would not otherwise ever get the opportunity to eat this.”

He wasn’t buying them for himself even.

We gotta stop judging. It sounds fine to say, “No candy or soda with food stamps.” But what about the birthday party, the graduation, the quinceañera, the bar mitzvah?

How about you mind your own business and leave poor folks alone. It’s hard enough being poor.