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The Colonel's Corner WKKS Classic Country Get the complete version in our print edition They Just Ain't No Free Lunch How
would you like to win $50,000 every day for a year?! Silly
question, ain’t it? May be, but the way I figger it, when a feller has
been pore for four score years what would he do with it? I know of nothing that
I’d spend it for. We’re
constantly inundated with announcements that we’re just a pig’s tail away
from being the grand prize winner.
They send some $500 coupons to spend on a $300 stereo, or some other gadget
worth about the same. They’re priced at only $895 but you save $500 with the
coupon. You
don’t have to buy anything so we just send in the application. Then we get a
notice that the winner list is down to five. Watch the mail box cause we may be
notified that we’re a winner. [They noticed that we didn’t buy anything.] We
hear nothing for two or three weeks, then they start again from scratch. I read
the fine print with a “spy glass” and found that the odds of winning are one
in two million. [Pretty long pig’s tail.] A
business that I frequent always asked if I’d like to buy a lottery ticket. My
answer was always the same. I have never, nor will I want to buy one. I read
that your chance of winning the
lottery is the same as being struck by lightning, so in my lifetime I
haven’t been struck so I think someone is trying to tell me something. You
get a nice big ad from a car dealer. You scratch off the paint and if a certain
number appears, you have definitely won a new car. Well I won! So, I get my
trusty “spy glass” out again. This time it says: In the unlikely event that
there is a misprint and there should be more than one winner, the drawing is
void. Well, it didn’t misprint, it printed them all the same! “Son-of-a-gun!
I missed again!” The
phone rings, you answer. A voice calls out cheerfully. “Congratulations! The
computer just selected you the winner! Aren’t you excited?!” What exactly
did I win?” I ask. “A gold credit card. Aren’t you delighted?”
Dumfounded is more like it. So dumfounded I can’t speak, so I hang up.
At least I finally won. The
same thing happened again, except before they could tell me what I’d won I
said, “You and I both know that there’s no free lunch, so whatever it is I
don’t want it! You can take it home with you.” I hung up again after they
told me just how intelligent they thought I really was. I won again! A
few days ago we got a package in the mail. Big red letters on the outside of the
package announced that it was a free gift plus a bonus. “Hot ziggety.”
I’ve won again! Inside
the package were two pretty books. Nothing we’d care to read but they’d look
nice on the bookshelf. After
a few days we were notified that we had a bang-up chance of winning $72,000. How
nice. We haven’t even entered the fracas. All we had to do was verify the
winning number and if you can believe this, send them $29.95 for the two free
books and they’ll enter us in the contest. I
owe them one for ingenuity and they owe me one for not being stupid enough to
bite. I am the winner of two worthless books. The
biggest, most profitable, and oldest scam is “Saving
Social security.” James
Roosevelt (son of FDR)
lived “high on the hog” all his life “Saving Social Security.” [People
who were born in the early 20’s are called “notch babies,” meaning that
they draw less money than the rest of the recipients.] Mr.
Roosevelt was always going to fix it but he never got it done. A new bunch (or
‘gang’) are going to do the same thing. They send a letter in a very large
folder that looks real important. All I gotta do is send in a $10 membership fee
and a $25 donation and they’ll either get me a raise or a $5,000 settlement. I
followed my usual philosophy; ignore it and maybe it’ll go away. Not that
bunch! The next time I heard from them they were exasperated. ‘28 million
people had responded but I had not! How could I be so apathetic?” (Multiply 28
million times $10. Not a bad rip-off. Why want $10 more?) Now,
if they don’t get me the $5,000 it will be my fault! (Blame switching.) From
whom are they trying to save Social
Security? They don’t say. We
know who the culprits are who are hijacking the excess Social
Security funds but there’s no way this side of Hades (or that other
place either) that we can stop them. The funds are not designated for S.S. only,
so if there are excess funds they are quickly gobbled up for other purposes.
[Who knows what? A new jet, the Bahamas, Scotland? Just a wild guess, of
course.] President
George W. Bush spoke of all the office space in Washington
that is wasted by all the file cabinets that are filled with worthless scraps of
paper. Turns out, they’re IOUs by the government to S.S. The
king of all phone calls was the “jack-. . .” who claimed to work for a check
clearinghouse and had to have our account number for identification. He was
belligerent and adamant about that fact. He said, “Stop fooling around! I have
to have it!” I said “You got a problem Jack, cause you’re gonna play H . .
. gettin’ it!” Works for me! They
just ain’t no “free lunch.” Some
opinions and facts from an “Old Timer.” See
you next week in
The Corner, Col
“B”
Reach
Col. Brown at
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