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| Photo credit: Ileana Johnson, 2014 |
We ate to live; we did not
live to eat. Food was for nourishment not for entertainment, gorging buffets, or
for bourgeois socializing. From time to time, adults ate better meals with family
and friends at weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Kids were generally not
included in such occasions. They stayed home.
When I went to first
grade, I moved to the city with my parents, 6 miles away. Our food then came from
the benevolent government planners who made us wait every day in endless lines
at the grocery store, the butcher store, the dairy store, the bakery, the
greengrocer, and the farmer’s market if we could find food, if the store did
not run out, if there was enough for everybody, if we had rationing coupons,
and if we could afford it.
Occasionally grandpa would
ride his bike to the city with a fisherman’s netting bag filled with a dozen eggs,
a piece of cheese, one smoked sausage left from the pig he butchered at
Christmas, and a live chicken which my Dad killed in the most gruesome way in
the yard, by cutting his head off. Mom plucked the chicken after dunking it in
boiling water. The poor thing was jumping in agony around the yard. I would not
have eaten the chicken except I was starving.
There were restaurants in
the city, patronized by the ruling elites because they were the only ones who
could afford the pricey meals. Their salaries were huge compared to ours. They
received special treatment and gifts of food and services in exchange for
loyalty to the communist party.
Allegiance and love for
family and conscience went out the window when the specter of hunger hung in
the air. It was easier to snitch on your family when you got extra food each
month and were allowed to shop in underground communist party stores laden with
abundant supplies from the west, fresh vegetables and fruits year around,
expensive wines, liqueurs, beer, juices, chocolates, oranges, bananas, and
other fine things that most Americans take for granted. No EBT, SNAP, or WIC
credit cards.
Someone who entered such a
store explained to me that it was as if you had died and gone to food heaven,
that’s how much food there was everywhere. No money was necessary. All you had
to do is sign your name in a book, leave your conscience at the door, and spy
on your closest relatives – each monthly report sufficed and you were fed quite
well.
My first encounter with a
grocery store in America kept me in awe for hours. I could not tear myself away
from the shelves, bright lights, the cleanliness, the colorful and hygienic
packaging, the refrigeration, and the fresh fruits and vegetables in January! I
kept filling the cart with everything, and then remembered that I had a budget,
and I would start over. People were laughing, could not understand where I came
from, and what we ate.
American buffets are an
inexplicable form of gluttony that Europeans have a hard time understanding. Is
it an indulgence because food is plentiful, always available without long lines
or rationing, and cheap? Why stuff yourself to the brim if you’ve never felt intense
hunger pains or experienced near starvation?
As the girth of Americans
is expanding, the nanny government is stepping in to regulate portion size,
control the type of foods they eat, the salt and sugar intake, and mandate
three “healthy” meals in school, replacing the parents as the providers and
decision-makers for their children. After all, the children belong to the
community, we are told, and they are no longer a parental responsibility.
As small family farms that
provide wholesome food are slowly disappearing, replaced by large corporate
farms, we are importing more and more food from other countries, putting our
food supply in jeopardy, at the whims of exporting countries. Fruits and
vegetables are imported from Guatemala, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Columbia, and
other South American markets. Even chicken, seafood, pork, and other meats come
from China.
Having to go hungry is a
concept that Americans are not willing to entertain. Abundance and endless
supply will last forever! As long as the big and mighty government is in
charge, we will never want for anything. Self-reliance is not necessary, not
even for food. Few people know that grocery stores only supply their stores
with food for three days.
We never had “fun” cafeteria
food fights or filled the trash cans with free taxpayer-supplied food we
disliked like American high school students do. That is because we did not have
a cafeteria, the communist state did not feed us, food was so scarce, and we
would not have turned down anything edible.
The American journalists in
Sochi, accustomed to a life of plenty in our free market-based economy, experienced
an unpleasant taste of a communist economy in their hotel rooms; they complained
on Twitter – they wanted the comfort provided by our capitalist economy.
Perhaps this experience in
Russia will change the rhetoric about the utopian communism, and the nonsensical
race for “collectivism, equality, and social justice” will stop. Everything
about communism was unjust - it was oppressive, unequal, and inadequate. And it
was not just about the lack of food – it crushed the human spirit.
As long as there is plenty
of food and no suffering from hunger, people are happy and satisfied, no matter
how enslaved their existence may be. As long as there are generous Americans
who go to work every day and pay taxes, there is money for welfare for those
who either lost their jobs or choose to be on welfare permanently in order to
find themselves, relishing in their new-found freedom from the drudgery of
work. That is how government officials spin their inability to create jobs for
the massively unemployed that would otherwise starve without food stamps and
welfare.
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