My Stimulus Check & Bedbugs

A notice came today from Social Security saying I would receive a $250 check next month as my share of the Stimulus Bill. Not on par with the bonus of an AIG executive, yet nothing to sneeze at.
I walked out to where Jackie was toiling over the income and outgo books and said, "I'm getting $250."
"No you're not."
I showed her the letter. "It says so right here. See?"
"What it means is, the general fund is getting $250. So that you'll feel good, when it arrives I'll add five dollars to your $15 weekly allowance. Just that week, of course."
I'll say one thing, I never lost $245 so fast in my life.
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The news says the country is being overrun by bedbugs. The best place to find them is at a hotel. I have never seen a bedbug and hope to keep it that way, but an old friend from Muncie grew up with them. They are smart little critters. When his mother placed a can filled with water under every leg of his bed, these not-so-dumb bugs would crawl up the wall and out onto the ceiling. When they were positioned over his bed, they'd let go.
My friend was black, a United Methodist minister and a civil rights activist. We met because I covered the "do-gooder" beat when I first arrived in Muncie. He was seen as the cause of racial problems in the city. Actually he was the solution if people had possessed the sense to see it. Few did.
His grandfather had been burned at the stake in Alabama and his father lynched there for a crime he didn't commit. His mother took the family north to the tough little town of Martins Ferry, Ohio. His 12-year-old sister was raped and thrown into the Ohio River to drown.
He wrote a book about his mother and named it for her, Lillie. She taught herself to read by studying the Martins Ferry newspaper every day. To support her family she walked across a railroad trestle to a maid's job in Wheeling, West Virginia. That was OK unless a train came along. She put both of her sons through college. My friend graduated from Ohio Wesleyan.
Quite a woman, Lillie. The only obstacle she couldn't overcome was those bedbugs. A minor problem, all things considered.

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